After his 2008 divorce from Justine Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX founder dated Amber Heard and Grimes
Over the years, Elon Musk has been involved in a number of well-publicized relationships.
In 2000, the Tesla CEO wed Justine Musk, his former spouse. Prior to their 2008 divorce, the couple had six children together. In 2010, Musk married Talulah Riley, an English actress; however, the two eventually got divorced and remarried. In 2016, their second divorce was finalised.
Additionally, he has been connected to singer Grimes, with whom he has three daughters, and actress Amber Heard. A few weeks prior to the birth of his second child with Grimes, in November 2021, he also fathered twins with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis. In early 2024, Musk and Zilis had a third child.
Musk, who now has twelve children, made a joke about how his expanding family could be able to address the “underpopulation crisis.”
“I’m trying my hardest to address the underpopulation issue. In 2022, Musk tweeted, “The greatest threat civilisation faces is a collapsing birth rate.”
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Here is a look back at Elon Musk’s dating history, spanning from his college relationships to his marriages.
Gwynne Jennifer
Musk and Jennifer Gwynne first crossed paths at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-1990s. Although she was drawn to Musk’s “quiet intensity,” Gwynne subsequently admitted to PEOPLE that he occasionally had a “silly” side. The couple was serious enough to introduce each other to their families during their roughly one-year relationship. For Gwynne’s birthday, Musk even gave her a necklace made of gold and emerald.
Gwynne and Musk parted ways shortly after she got back from studying overseas. Musk was “not very good at a long-distance relationship,” according to Gwynne, and communicating over the phone “seemed like a waste of time to him.”
In 2022, Gwynne auctioned off items from their time together, including several photos and a handwritten card, to help pay for her stepson’s college tuition. Ahead of the auction, she recalled that her time d ating Musk was “amazing.”
“His vision and brilliance were balanced with a bit of wide-eyed wonder back then,” Gwynne remarked. I can recite anecdotes about how Elon predicted the development of electric vehicles long before I saw them on the road every day. However, I also remember the holidays in 1994, when Elon’s family invited me to stay at their house in Toronto. I am aware that Elon, Kimbal, Tosca, and the elegant supermodel Maye Musk are a close-knit group, but they allowed me to join them for a few amazing days that winter.
Musk, Justine
When Musk and Justine Musk (née Wilson) were both enrolled at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, they first crossed paths. Musk was a sophomore at the time, and Justine was a freshman. He saw her across the common area and went over to her.
“He asked me to go get ice cream. In a 2010 Marie Claire story, she writes, “I said yes, but then blew him off with a note on my dorm-room door.” A few hours later, while I was hunched over writing a Spanish text in a hot room in the student centre, I heard a courteous cough coming from behind me. Musk had two cones of chocolate-chip ice cream flowing down his hands and was grinning clumsily. He is not a man who accepts rejection.
Musk persisted in pursuing Justine even after he changed schools. But before Justine spent a year teaching English as a second language in Japan, they broke up. He just so happened to give her a call a week after she got back to Canada. In order to be with Musk, Justine relocated to California, and they quickly got engaged. The couple got married in 2000.
As Justine reflected on their relationship, she noted that Musk’s remarks about being a “alpha” were among the early “warning signs” of their future.
“A certain dynamic started to take hold in the months after our wedding,” she asserted. My judgement was overruled by Musk’s, and he was often pointing out my shortcomings. I kept telling him, “I am not your employee; I am your wife.” “I would fire you if you were my employee,” he stated as frequently.
Nevada Alexander, the couple’s first child, passed away from sudden infant death syndrome at the age of ten weeks in 2002. According to Justine’s essay, the couple chose to attempt to conceive again as soon as possible despite grieving in very different ways. Later, in 2004, they welcomed twins Griffin and Vivian, and in 2006, they welcomed a trio of triplets: Kai, Saxon, and Damian.
Justine recalled that they had a “dream lifestyle” filled with extravagant events, multimillion-dollar homes and a staff that catered to all their needs. However, she felt a lack of “intimacy and empathy” from Musk.
She wrote that a car accident served as a “wake-up call” for her. “I barely recognized myself,” she said. “I had turned into a trophy wife.” Shortly after the accident, the couple tried counseling, but after just a month, Musk allegedly gave her an ultimatum: to live life as they had or get a divorce. He filed for divorce the next day.
Following their 2008 split, the couple went through a complicated divorce, ending with shared custody of their five children. Justine also received the couple’s home in Los Angeles and spousal and child support from Musk, he wrote in 2010 for Business Insider.
Talulah Riley
Musk met actress Talulah Riley shortly after he filed for divorce from Justine. A London pub is where the two initially met, according to Business Insider. Riley subsequently remembered that at the time, she was unaware of his identity.
She told biographer Ashlee Vance, “I remember thinking that this guy probably didn’t get to talk to young actresses a lot and that he seemed quite nervous.” “I chose to treat him with the utmost kindness and make sure he had a pleasant evening. I had no idea that he had conversed with numerous attractive women during his life.
Musk and Riley became engaged just six weeks after Musk filed for divorce from Justine. Riley relocated to Los Angeles, and in 2010, they were married at Scotland’s Dornoch Cathedral. Two years later, Musk filed for divorce.
“Those four years were incredible. I shall always love you. One day, you’ll bring great joy to someone,” he tweeted.
However, Musk and Riley’s love didn’t stop there; in July 2013, they were married a second time.
In 2014, Musk re-filed for divorce, but seven months later, he withdrawn the application. Riley filed for divorce in March 2016, and it was finalised in November.
In 2022, Riley told The Independent that she knew it was “strange” to marry and divorce Musk twice. Despite their split, she added that they remained friendly.
She told the outlet: “I suppose the reason to get remarried was just because it felt silly to be together unmarried after having been married. You know, it’s like a habit. We were saying, ‘This is my husband.’ ‘This is my wife.’ ‘Oh, wait, no, we’re not that anymore. We better be that again.’ ”
Riley married actor Thomas Brodie-Sangster on June 22, 2024. The couple wed in front of family and friends at St. George’s Church in England.
Amber Heard
In 2012, after Musk and Riley were no longer together, he contacted filmmaker Robert Rodriguez to arrange a dinner with actress Amber Heard. (Both Heard and Musk starred in Rodriguez’s Machete Kills.)
Heard, who at the time was seeing Johnny Depp, failed to show up for the dinner that the two had planned. Although it’s unclear exactly when their connection turned amorous, it would take them a few years to bond. Heard stated in court that she did not know Musk until the 2016 Met Gala, when Depp “stood [her] up” on the red carpet, despite Depp’s claims in court documents before his 2022 defamation lawsuit against Heard that the two had secretly started dating in 2015.
didn’t recognize [Musk] until we started talking and he reminded me we had met once before,” Heard recalled during the trial. “He seemed like a real gentleman. He was really nice. He sat at a nearby table and we got to speaking that night and eventually became friends.”
Heard filed for divorce from Depp just a few weeks later. In July 2016, she and Musk began to spark romance rumors.
In April 2017, they made things Instagram official during a trip to Australia. By May, insiders shared that the couple were “very serious about each other,” and Heard had already met Musk’s children.
However, in August 2017, the couple called it quits. Sources told PEOPLE that their busy schedules were to blame for the split, which was allegedly initiated by Musk. Musk left a comment on one of Heard’s Instagram posts, writing that things ended amicably.
“Although Amber and I did break up, we are still friends, remain close and love one another,” he wrote. “Long distance relationships, when both partners have intense work obligations are always difficult, but who knows what the future holds.”
Shortly after, the pair were spotted together again and released a joint statement to clear the air. In a message shared with PEOPLE, the couple wrote that distance had been tough on their relationship, but they still had the “utmost respect” for each other.
In November 2017, Musk opened up about their breakup in an interview, sharing that he had been “really in love” and it “hurt bad” when they went their separate ways.
Musk and Heard were seen together once more the following month. Sources claimed that despite the fact that they were seen kissing, they were “just friends.” After being sighted together on vacation in Chile a few days later, it seemed like Musk and Heard’s relationship had taken a romantic turn by January.
In February 2018, the couple broke up for the second time; according to a source who spoke to PEOPLE, the “timing wasn’t right” for them. Heard praised Musk in an interview later that year, saying that they had become friends because of their “intellectual curiosity, ideas and conversation, a shared love for science.”
She stated, “Elon and I had a beautiful relationship, and we have a beautiful friendship now, one that was based on our core values.”