Married for 25 Years, Bill and Melinda Gates Still Wash Dishes Together Every Night

• Bill and Melinda Gates have been married for 25 years.
• Despite their wealth, the couple takes time to do the dishes every night.
• The tradition has helped keep their marriage strong.

Life must be very comfortable when you’re married to one of the world’s richest men, right? Most of us will probably imagine that doing home chores should be the least of your worries since you can easily afford to hire people to do such menial tasks.

And yet to this day, billionaire couple Bill and Melinda Gates make sure that they spend some time in the kitchen every night – so they can wash the dirty dishes together. It’s a tradition they’ve kept throughout the years and it’s been one of the secrets of their strong marriage.

Bill and Melinda Gates have kept their marriage alive for 25 years and counting.

In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, Melinda shared that she met Bill back in 1987 when she started working for Microsoft. They soon fell in love and fast forward to the present, they’ve stayed married for 25 years and have 3 children together. They’re also the founders of the biggest private charity in the world, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Things weren’t really easy at the beginning of their married life.

During her first pregnancy, Melinda “felt alone in her marriage to Bill,” reported Business Insider, because he was always busy with his work as the Microsoft CEO.

Fortunately, things eventually improved as the couple often took time to talk about their challenges. Case in point, they began to do dishes as a family so that Melinda doesn’t have to do everything in her own.

Melinda reflected:

“One night I realized I was still in the kitchen a good 10, 15 minutes after everybody else doing the last-minute things.

“Sometimes in the moment my frustration or anger just comes out. So one night we stood up after dinner and people in the family started to melt away, like, off they go upstairs. So hand on my hips, I’m, like, ‘Nobody leaves the kitchen until I leave the kitchen!'”

The chore has since become a tradition in the household.

And while dishwashing may seem like a simple thing for others, Melinda believes that dividing responsibilities equally between the husband and the wife can indeed contribute to a happier, healthier relationship.

So yes, they’re still going to wash dishes in the years to come – and they’re gonna do it together.