Jeff Bezos's Mom Was A Divorced Teen Who Couldn't Afford A Phone So Used A Walkie Talkie To Communicate—Now She Could Be Worth $76 Billion

Jeff Bezos may have built Amazon AMZN in a garage, but his success story didn't start there—it started with a teen mom who had nothing. When Bezos honored his mother in a post on X in 2019, the world saw the woman who raised one of the richest men alive. She wasn't born into wealth, and she certainly didn't have it easy. In fact, she was a teenage mother who had to fight just to stay in school.

Jacklyn Bezos gave birth to Jeff at just 17 years old while still in high school. The school administration tried to kick her out, but she refused to accept it. "It didn't make any sense to me, so I pushed back and I kept on pushing back," she recalled in a commencement speech at Cambridge College, as reported by CNBC. The school relented—but with cruel conditions. She wasn't allowed to talk to other students, eat in the cafeteria, or even walk across the stage at graduation.

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By the time Jeff was 17 months old, Jacklyn was already divorced from his biological father, Ted Jorgensen. Determined to make a life for herself and her son, she took secretarial classes and landed a job that paid $190 a month. It was barely enough to afford rent, so when she couldn't pay for a phone, her father rigged a walkie-talkie system so she could check in with her parents at 7 a.m. every day. "That's how we were able to stay in an apartment," she explained.

Jacklyn didn't let anything stop her from continuing her education. She enrolled in night school, bringing baby Jeff with her to class, carrying two duffel bags—one for textbooks, one for diapers. It was in one of those classes that she met her future husband, Mike Bezos, a Cuban refugee who would go on to raise Jeff as his own.

Life changed dramatically for the Bezos family in 1995 when Jeff pitched an idea to his parents—an online bookstore. Jacklyn and Mike invested $250,000 in their son's startup, a risky move at the time. That gamble paid off in a way no one could have predicted. By 2018, their stake in Amazon was reportedly worth $30 billion, according to Bloomberg.

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With Amazon's stock continuing to grow, their investment has likely appreciated even further. However, calculating their current worth isn't as simple as just comparing Amazon's 2018 stock price to its 2025 price.

In 2022, Amazon executed a 20-for-1 stock split, which dramatically changed how share prices and ownership stakes are measured. This means:

• The price per share was divided by 20—for example, Amazon's pre-split price of $1,834.40 per share became $91.72 per share post-split.
• The number of shares each investor owned multiplied by 20—meaning anyone who had 1 share before now had 20.

When looking at historical stock prices today, they appear adjusted for the split, meaning the numbers shown have already been divided by 20. For example, on Aug. 2, 2018 at the time the Bloomberg article was published, Amazon's stock price appears as $91.72 per share in adjusted historical data, but the actual pre-split price was $1,834.40.

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If Jacklyn and Mike Bezos held 16.6 million shares in 2018, then after Amazon's 20-for-1 stock split in 2022, they would now own 332 million shares.

As of Feb. 8, Amazon's stock price has surged to $229.15 per share. If they haven't sold or donated any significant number of shares since 2018, their combined net worth could now be approximately $76.1 billion—making Jacklyn Bezos potentially one of the wealthiest women in the world.

However, exact reporting on their shares has not been made public since 1999, so this estimate is based solely on previous reports and Amazon's stock performance rather than confirmed recent disclosures.

From a teenage mom who had to fight for her education to a billionaire investor in one of the world's most valuable companies, her journey proves that grit and determination can change everything.

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