Redmond, Washington - On Monday, the news that Microsoft founder Bill Gates and wife Melinda have filed for divorce caused a worldwide sensation. After 27 years, everything was over and done. But the family's decision to be tight-lipped has generated intense speculation.

The parents of three have been a symbol of success in every area of life, including marriage. They spent decades pumping billions into countless international charitable efforts and are always welcome guests at benefit events.

But it seems their relationship has been off kilter for a while in, evidenced by the over $2 billion in stock shares transferred from Bill to Melinda on the day the split was made public, and by Melinda renting out an entire island as a preemptive hide out from media encampment.

There is now a lot of interest in a 1997 profile published by Time Magazine, which took a detailed, intimate look into the life of Bill Gates. The article revealed that, at least at the time, Melinda was allowing Bill to take a yearly holiday with his ex, Ann Winblad, who like Gates, was an intellectual visionary.

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Although Bill and Melinda had known each other for seven years when they married in 1997, Bill and Ann had also traveled the world together for years prior.

Melinda and Bill met during a Microsoft event in Manhattan in 1987, according to the Times report. She was still working for the company at the time, but later resigned.

It as 1984 that Bill met Ann, a software entrepreneur and venture capitalist, according to People. The two were a couple for three years but separated ostensibly due to Ann being ready for marriage and Bill not quite there.

The entrepreneur and Ann kept in touch, that according to Newsweek, The two were so close even after their breakup that Bill revealed in his Times interview that he actually asked Winblad for her approval to marry Melinda. Winblad apparently said that Melinda would be a "good match" for Bill because "she had intellectual stamina."

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And those holidays he went on with Winblad? The Times interview revealed that for more than ten years the two took themselves to her beach cottage on the Outer Banks of North Carolina for outdoor sports and conversation.

"We can play putt-putt while discussing biotechnology," Gates said at the time. Winblad gave her own perspective: "We share our thoughts about the world and ourselves. And we marvel about how, as two young overachievers, we began a great adventure on the fringes of a little-known industry and it landed us at the center of an amazing universe."

There was never any follow up to that unique part of the Times interview to determine if they continued their tradition as Melinda and Bill started growing their family in 1996. Winblad and Gates later became joint partners of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners in 1999, a venture capitalist group.

It is hard to pin the divorce squarely on Bill's odd "other" relationship. After all, 70-year-old Ann Winblad has been married for years to Alex Kline, the younger brother of actor and Oscar winner Kevin Kline.