7 little-known facts about Steve Jobs

In the wake of the imaginative tech guru's death, fresh details about his past girlfriends and biological parents trickle into the mainstream

Steve Jobs once dated Joan Baez and Diane Keaton? Interesting new facts about the entrepreneur's personal life are bubbling to the surface in the wake of his death.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Robert Galbraith)

In the days following his death, obituaries and reflections on Steve Jobs are revealing intriguing, little-known facts about the enigmatic Apple co-founder who closely guarded his private life. Here are seven:

1. He was adopted, and his biological father was Syrian

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

2. His biological sister is novelist Mona Simpson

Jobs' biological parents, Jandali and Joanne Carole Schiebele, then an American grad student, married 10 months after giving Steve up for adoption. They had another child, Mona. Jobs didn't meet his biological sibling until he was 27, when she invited him to a book party for her novel, Anywhere But Here. Though Simpson painted a not-altogether-flattering picture of Jobs in her Silicon Valley novel, A Regular Guy, the two were close. "We're family," Jobs said in a 1997 interview. "She's one of my best friends in the world. I call her and talk to her every couple of days."

3. He attended Reed College... and studied calligraphy

It's widely known that Jobs dropped out of college, but seldom noted that the college he did attend for a few months was Portland's uber-liberal Reed College. He cited a calligraphy class he'd taken there as an influence on his Apple products.

4. He did LSD... and he really liked it

Jobs said that experimenting with the psychedelic drug was "one of the two or three most important things he has done in his life," reports The New York Times' John Markoff. Markoff wrote that Jobs "said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics — even people who knew him well, including his wife — could never understand."

5. He met his wife at Stanford

Jobs met his wife, Laurene Powell, when he spoke at the Stanford Business School, where she was pursuing an MBA. She was a vegetarian, like Jobs, and a former investment banker. The two had an immediate connection. A year after Jobs ran across the Stanford parking lot to ask the blonde beauty to dinner, the two married, in 1991, at a Zen Buddhist Ceremony at Yosemite National Park. She's since co-founded a natural foods company, actively championed Teach for America, and supported Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. Last year, President Obama appointed her to a White House panel on community-based social programs.

6. But first he dated Joan Baez

Before marrying Powell, Jobs dated folk singer Joan Baez — who had previously dated Bob Dylan, Jobs' favorite musician. A friend of Jobs' was quoted as saying that she "believed that Steve became the lover of Joan Baez in large measure because Baez had been the lover of Bob Dylan." Jobs was also romantically linked to actress Diane Keaton.

7. He initially tried to treat his cancer with a "special diet"

In October 2003, Jobs was diagnosed with a rare type of pancreatic cancer treatable with surgery, but he hesitated about having the operation — "to the horror of the tiny circle of intimates in whom he'd confided." A Buddhist and vegetarian, Jobs decided instead to pursue alternative therapies and treat his cancer with a "natural diet." He tried doing so for nine months, as the Apple board fretted, before finally having the surgery in July 2004, at which point the cancer might have spread and his chance of long-term survival been reduced.

Sources: CNN, Daily Beast, Huffington Post, International Business Times, New York Times (2), San Jose Mercury News, TIME