Elon Musk part 1 focused primarily on his childhood, parents, and siblings. Part 2 will be more focused on his adult relationships, his marriages, and the birth of his children.
Jennifer Justine Wilson:
Elon met his first wife, Justine Wilson while attending Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. She was an aspiring writer and was in her first year at the university. Elon had asked her out for ice cream and she said yes but “blew him off”. Later, as she was studying in the student center, she heard a cough behind her and when she turned to look, Elon was standing behind her holding two ice cream cones with ice cream melting and dripping down his hands and an awkward smile on his face. She said that he was not one to take no for an answer. It certainly sounds like him from the stories I’ve read. He continued to pursue her even after he left to attend Wharton. She said that she wasn’t the only woman he was pursuing.
He was visiting friends at Queen’s and she agreed to have dinner with him. They then went their separate ways and she went to Japan to teach for a year.
After returning from Japan, Elon called and they started dating. During this time, Elon sold Zip2 and he was worth around $20 million “overnight”. He proposed on a street corner, on bended knee, and two years later in January 2000, they were married. He almost died that year after contracting malaria while on vacation in South Africa. In 2010 Justine wrote an article in Marie Claire where she tells the story of a “financial agreement” that was agreed to before the marriage and signed almost 2 months after the marriage. She also called it a “period of mediation”. She claims that she had no idea what she was agreeing to or signing but fails to disclose that she and Elon had separate legal counsel and an independent mediator during the negotiations.
In a 2010 Business Insider article Elon wrote:
Given the choice, I'd rather stick a fork in my hand than write about my personal life. Unfortunately, it seems that I don't have any other option. Several awful things have been widely reported that are simply false, but a falsehood uncorrected may as well be truth.
We began negotiations two months before marriage with separate legal counsel and an independent mediator drawing up the agreement and signed it six weeks after marriage. In mid-1999, Justine told me that if I proposed to her, she would say yes. Since this was not long after the sale of my first company, Zip2, to Compaq, and the subsequent cofounding of PayPal, friends and family advised me to separate whether the marriage was for love or money.
In 2002, around the time that Elon sold PayPal to eBay bringing his worth up to well over $100 million, their first child was born. His name was Nevada. Sadly just days after the sale of PayPal, Nevada died due to sudden infant death syndrome, (SIDS), at the age of 10 weeks. Paramedics were able to resuscitate the child but he was deemed brain-dead and taken to the hospital where he was put on life support. Life support was removed 3 days later. She admits that “Nevada's death sent me on a years-long inward spiral of depression and distraction.” Elon seemed to immerse himself into his work.
Multiple births were said to be hereditary in Elon’s family, but Justine also went to a fertility clinic for IVF (in vitro fertilization), which often results in multiple births. In 2004, she gave birth to twin boys, and in 2006 gave birth to triplets, all boys.
They lived a jet-setting lifestyle with a lot of famous acquaintances and black-tie affairs. However, Justine felt very unhappy with her life, like “a trophy wife” and more like an employee than a wife. In her Marie Clair article, she accuses Elon of insisting that she go more and more blonde as time went on. (While looking for pictures of Justine to add to this article, it’s strange that in all of the more recent pictures of her since the divorce, she seems to be progressively more blonde.) She asked Elon to enter marriage counseling. He agreed but after 3 sessions, he filed for divorce. The divorce was final in 2008.
Talulah Riley
Very soon after divorcing Justine, Elon met Talulah Riley. Stories of how they met are sketchy at best. One story is that he was in a slump after the divorce and accompanied his friend on a trip to London. His friend convinced him to go out for a night on the town and wound up at a bar called “Whiskey Mist” in Mayfair. It was here that he met Talulah. She had been invited by a club promoter friend. She and Elon immediately had a connection, and Musk was fixated on Riley. He wasn’t interested in talking to the other beautiful women that the club promoter tried to introduce him to that night. He only had eyes for her.
Justine writes that she “received a text from Elon 6 weeks after their breakup that he was engaged to a gorgeous British actress in her early 20s who had moved to Los Angeles to be with him.”
Elon was hammered in the press, accusing him of abandoning his first wife and the mother of his children because of a fling with Riley. He wrote an answer to these accusations in a July 2010 Business Insider article in which he states:
Since I was accused of absconding with an actress in one of the biggest newspapers in the world, and moreover was quoted frequently in the article, this was assumed by many to be true. Let me be absolutely clear: it is not. I filed for divorce from Justine (for reasons I should not have to justify or make public) before I met Talulah Riley, the woman who is now my fiancé. The fact of the matter is that Talulah and I lived on opposite sides of the world and hadn't even known of each other's existence before the marriage with Justine ended.
It is worth mentioning that Talulah, as anyone who knows her would attest, is one of the most kind hearted and gentle people in the world. The cliché that has been propagated, of me abandoning a devoted wife to "run off" with a young actress, could not have been more falsely applied.
From Riley’s mini-bio posted on IMDb, we know that she is an English actress, born in Hertfordshire.
Talulah Riley is an English actress. She has appeared in films such as Pride & Prejudice (2005), St. Trinian's (2007), The Boat That Rocked (2009), and Inception (2010).
She made her stage debut in The Philadelphia Story at the Old Vic in 2005. Her television credits include episodes of Poirot (Poirot: Five Little Pigs (2003)), Marple (Marple: The Moving Finger (2006)), Doctor Who (Doctor Who: Silence in the Library (2008) and Doctor Who: Forest of the Dead (2008)) and the HBO television series Westworld (2016).
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Pedro Borges
Also, a couple of quotes from Talulah Riley listed in her biography might give us some insight as to why Elon was smitten with her.
“I got into physics through pop science and quantum science and ended up being such a quantum groupie.”
“Dark matter is interesting. Basically, the universe is heavier than it should be. There's whole swathes of stuff we can't account for.”
If you will recall from my previous article, Elon studied physics at university. This could have been a shared interest for them and given them much to talk about.
The couple was eventually married in 2010. Just 2 years later, rumors of their breakup swirled when Elon tweeted this to Talulah:
"It was an amazing four years. I will love you forever. You will make someone very happy one day."
In a January 2018 article by Forbes, Elon had this to say:
This morning on the phone Musk commended Riley as "a great woman" with whom he simply fell out of love. They had been together for four years, married for one. Riley has lived away from their home in Bel Air for nearly six months.
"We took some time apart for several months to see if absence makes the heart grow fonder, and unfortunately it did not," Musk said. "I still love her, but I’m not in love with her. And I can’t really give her what she wants."
Musk said he will "always be friends" with the 26-year-old Pride & Prejudice star but said it’s "far too difficult to stay married. Every day was just too difficult."
The South African native called Riley the "polar opposite" of his first wife, Justine Musk, who had blogged extensively about the acrimonious terms of their divorce.
In 2013 Elon and Talulah were remarried, but it would last only a year before he would file for, then withdraw a second divorce. In 2016 however, Talulah filed for divorce and it was final in that same year. They remain friends.
Amber Heard
Musk began dating Amber Heard in 2016 after his divorce. The relationship would only last for 1 year citing intense schedules as the reason for the breakup. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said, "I was really in love, and it hurt bad."
Grimes: Claire Elise Boucher
Claire Elise Boucher, known professionally as “Grimes”, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, record producer, and visual artist. At age 18, she moved to Montréal, Quebec to attend Montréal's McGill University to study neuroscience where she was ultimately expelled for non-attendance. Her new music interests took over her time.
Say what you will, but this is one strange woman. She has been photographed reading the Communist Manifesto, which she later said was just an opportunity to troll. Just look at the names she’s given her poor children. Their money will shield these kids but you might think it’s akin to child abuse.
Grimes and Elon met over Twitter and started dating discreetly. In May 2018 they appeared together at a Met Gala. Their relationship has been on-again, off-again since its inception. She announced on Instagram that she was pregnant in January 2020 and Elon announced the birth of their son, X Æ A-12 in May. In September of 2021, he announced their breakup after 3 years together. Elon stated they still loved each other, saw each other frequently, and remained on great terms. In December 2021 they announced the birth of their daughter with the help of a surrogate. They named her Exa Dark Sideræl. This makes Elon’s 8th child and only girl. "(His first son Nevada died at the age of 10 weeks). They call her “Y”. They lived in separate houses and had a very strange relationship that’s not surprising the more I find out about her.
Natasha Bassett
Natasha Bassett, Elon’s latest girlfriend was born in Sydney, Australia. She began her acting career at the age of 14. She is also a screenwriter and director. At the age of 19, she moved to New York on a screenwriting scholarship and has since moved to Los Angeles, California. She played Britney Spears in the 2017 Lifetime Britney Spears movie called “Britany Ever After”. She will be starring in the upcoming biopic of Elvis Presley as Presley’s first girlfriend Dixie Locke, along with Austin Butler and Tom Hanks.
The 27-year-old actress was photographed exiting Elon’s jet in LA recently. It is rumored that they have been seeing each other for a couple of months and are currently in a monogamous relationship.
I have noticed some striking similarities between all of the women with whom Elon has had relationships. They all seem to have the same look about them, and that includes Grimes who can be a bit quirky. She seems to like shock value. It may be that they all remind him of his mother, Maye Musk when she was a young woman. This is a picture of her at age 15.
Hopefully, now that we have the history, family life, and relationships of Elon Musk cleared up, we can move on to his purchase of Twitter. It will be interesting to see where he goes from here.
Thank you SuperNana for your research into his shall we say complex history. At least it doesn’t seem he was having adulterous affairs while married. That’s a big plus.
Wow, Nana, you really are super! Super smart and interesting, too. Loved this dive into Elons private life. Interesting how the women resemble his Mother. However, they can only hope to stay as beautiful as she is in their later years. I didn’t know about his previous wives b4 grimes, that is fascinating. He’s a real ladies man!