It's been 1 year since Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez had their relationship leaked to the world — here's the full story of their whirlwind romance (AMZN)

Simon Stacpoole/Offside / Contributor

• One year ago, Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez were publicly outed as a couple the same day the Amazon CEO and his wife, MacKenzie, announced their divorce.  
• The National Enquirer had been investigating Bezos and Sanchez for months and had obtained leaked photos and texts the couple had sent, including the now-famous message where Bezos called Sanchez "alive girl." 
• In the 12 months since, both Bezos and Sanchez have finalized their respective divorces and have embarked on a whirlwind romance that's taken them from Wimbledon to a yacht in St. Barths. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

It's been a whirlwind year for Jeff Bezos and his girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez. 

Exactly one year ago, the bombshell news broke that Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, were getting a divorce after 25 years of marriage. Hours later, we learned that Bezos was in a relationship with Lauren Sanchez, a TV host, and helicopter pilot who, along with her husband, had been friends with the Bezoses. 

Despite a tumultuous few months that involved leaked texts, blackmail, a billion-dollar divorce, and maybe even interference from the Saudi Arabian government, Bezos and Sanchez are still going strong.  

Here's how their relationship became public and how they've spent their first year as a couple. 

It all started on January 9, 2019. Shortly after 9 AM, Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos issued a joint statement on Twitter that they were divorcing.

"As our family and close friends know, after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation, we have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends," the statement read. "If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again."

MacKenzie Bezos is one of Amazon's earliest employees. The couple has four children together. 

A mere few hours later, a second bombshell dropped: Bezos was in a relationship with Lauren Sanchez.

Sanchez started her career as a news reporter and anchor — she was a longtime anchor of "Good Day LA" on Fox 11 and worked as a correspondent on "Extra." 

More recently, she's worked as a helicopter pilot and founded her own aerial filming company in 2016 called Black Ops Aviation. Bezos has hired Sanchez's company to film footage for his rocket company, Blue Origin. 

Sanchez has also had TV and film roles, including as the host of the reality show "So You Think You Can Dance" and playing an anchor in movies like "Fight Club" and "The Day After Tomorrow," according to her IMDB page. 

At the time, Sanchez was married to Patrick Whitesell, the co-CEO of WME, a Hollywood talent agency.

Sanchez and Whitesell had been married since 2005, but at the time the news broke, the couple had been separated since the fall, according to Page Six. 

The couple was friends with Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos because they had houses near each other in Seattle, Page Six reported. 

See Also:

• One year has passed since we found out about Jeff Bezos' dramatic divorce and his relationship with Lauren Sanchez — here's everything that's happened since
• I tried Alienware's portable Windows gaming PC concept that looks a lot like the Switch, and I was surprised at how different it felt from Nintendo's console
• Nobel laureate Paul Krugman said he likely fell for a phishing scam. Here's how phishing scams work and how to avoid them.

SEE ALSO: The 27 biggest tech scandals of 2019