Sustaining marriage for the 44-year-old billionaire entrepreneur and innovator is almost as challenging as developing his electric car Tesla, designing rockets that deliver supplies to the space station- SpaceX, or founding PayPal.
Silicon Valley tycoon, Elon Musk, called the Thomas Edison of our time, remains married to his second wife, Talulah Riley, after divorcing her once, marrying her twice and tearing up the second set of divorce papers.
Talulah met her man at London's West End club, Whisky Mist, in Mayfair in 2008 when he was trying to clear his head after divorcing his first wife, Justine Wilson, after a six-year marriage that produced five children.
- South African-born Elon Musk had a brutal upbringing, a new book reveals.
- Schoolmates didn't like the young know-it-all and he was kicked, shoved down a flight of stairs and bashed against the ground until he passed out.
- Starter wife' Justine's first child with Musk, son Nevada, tragically died of sudden infant death syndrome at ten weeks.
- He gave Talulah three engagement rings – a giant one, an everyday ring, and a third with a diamond surrounded by ten sapphires.
- Said Talulah: 'Elon doesn't have to listen to anyone in life. No one. But he proved he would take s**t from me'.
- He spit coffee across a conference room table because it was cold.
Introduced by the club's promoter, Musk was aroused by the curvy, sultry-eyed actress who arrived with a girlfriend, wearing a full-length, flowing gown showing her 'dazzling figure,' describes author Ashlee Vance in Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, published by Ecco Books.
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| Loved up: Elon Musk and Talulah Riley have been married, divorced, married and almost divorced again. After meeting in London, they met up in Beverly Hills several weeks later and lying in bed together at the Peninsula Hotel, he asked her to marry him. He didn't have a ring so he suggested they shake on it. |
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| Happy together: Said Talulah: 'Elon doesn't have to listen to anyone in life. No one. But he proved he would take s**t from me' |
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| Starter wife: Justine viewed Musk as her conquering hero but at their wedding reception, she saw a different face. He pulled her close and told her, 'I am the alpha in this relationship' |
They had lunch the following day and Musk told Talulah, still a virgin at 22, that he wanted to show her his rockets.
'I was skeptical, but he did actually show me rocket videos,' Talulah stated.
They met up again in Beverly Hills several weeks later and lying in bed together at the Peninsula Hotel, he asked her to marry him. He didn't have a ring so he suggested they shake on it and they did.
He later gave her three engagement rings – a giant one, an everyday ring, and a third with a diamond surrounded by ten sapphires.
'I remember him saying, 'Being with me was choosing the hard path'. I didn't quite understand at the time, but I do now. It's quite hard, quite the crazy ride'.
Talulah thought she was stepping into life with 'a world conquering, jet-setting billionaire'.
It turned out to be a baptism by fire. His divorce was not final from Justine, he was short on cash and his two big investments, SpaceX and Tesla desperately needed cash infusions.
He had intense nightmares that made him yell out, climb on her and start screaming in his sleep.
She saw him through a very rough period of borrowing hundreds of thousands of dollars, burning through $4 million a month to keep his projects alive, borrowing from friends to make payroll and negotiating with investors.
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| Elon had a miserable childhood and brutal upbringing in South Africa by his father who exerted some unidentified form of psychological torture on the boy. |
When they got engaged the first time, Elon gave Talulah three engagement rings – a giant one, an everyday ring, and a third with a diamond surrounded by ten sapphires.
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| Griffin Musk is one of the children of Elon Musk, co-founder and owner of several companies and one of the richest men in the world. |
The morning Elon filed for divorce, he cut off Justine's credit card. She continued blogging and fought for more money in their divorce settlement. Elon didn't have any liquid assets at the time but she ended up with $2 million in cash, $80,000 a month in alimony, child support for seventeen years and a coveted Tesla roadster
He retreated within himself. He lost a lot of weight, bags formed under his eyes and 'he looked like death itself', Riley said.
'I remember thinking this guy would have a heart attack and die. He seemed like a man on the brink' – that is until SpaceX metamorphosed from the joke of the aeronautics industry into one of its most consistent operators.'
SpaceX sends a rocket up about once a month, carrying satellites for companies and nations and supplies to the International Space Station' and has once again made the United States a player in the worldwide commercial launch market.
While turning Tesla into a star of modern American industry the marriage with Talulah was over and the couple divorced.
They were apart for less than a year before getting back together again.
'I just wasn't happy', Riley said.
'I thought maybe I had made the wrong decision for my life.'
But she came back to Elon because of 'the lack of viable alternatives'.
'I looked around, and there was no one else nice to be with. Number two is that Elon doesn't have to listen to anyone in life. No one. He doesn't have to listen to anything that doesn't fit into his worldview. But he proved he would take s**t from me'.
'He said, 'Let me listen to her and figure this thing out.' He proved that he valued my opinion on things in life and was willing to listen. I thought it was quite a telling thing for the man – that he made the effort. And then, I love him and missed him'.
Talulah hung in there to share Musk's net worth, now estimated to be around $10 billion.
Eight years before meeting Talulah Riley, the South African-born Musk had courted and married Canadian author Justine Wilson.
"They ABUSED Me For Years!" - Elon Musk On His Tragic Childhood