Getty Susan Brown Bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg's ex wife.
Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor running for president in 2020, has been married once to now ex-wife Susan Brown. She’s the mother of his two daughters, Emma and Georgina Bloomberg.
According to Biography.com, Bloomberg has been dating girlfriend Diana Taylor since 2000, although they’re not married. A 1999 article in The Age, an Australian newspaper, reported that Brown, the former Susan Meyer, is a “Yorkshire woman he (Michael Bloomberg) met when she was temping at Salomons.” Bloomberg will take the presidential debate stage for the first time on February 19, 2020, due to a surge in the polls.
“We’re still close friends. Sue would say, ‘If you hadn’t worked so hard, we would have had a better marriage,’ but I’m not so sure,” Bloomberg said to the publication at that time. “After 20 years, she wasn’t happy and I’m not sure why. I spent most weekends with my kids.”
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Bloomberg & Susan Brown Had a Long-Term Marriage But Were Described as ‘Best Friends’ Even After Their Divorce
According to Biography.com, Bloomberg and Susan Brown were married from 1976 to 1993. They are said to have remained “close friends” after their divorce, the site reports.
According to The New York Daily News, Brown “kept playing house with her ex in his E. 79th St. townhouse for years” after they split, although they no longer live together.
“My parents are best friends,” their daughter Emma told The New York Times in 2001. “Nobody understands that until they actually see it.”
The couple’s wedding announcement in The New York Times says that Susan Elizabeth Barbara Meyer was the daughter of Wing Comdr. Donald W. J. Brown, R.A.F., retired, and Mrs. Brown of Malta. At the time of her marriage to Michael Rubens Bloomberg, he was described as “general partner in charge of equity trading and sales for Salomon Brothers, a New York brokerage company.” A rabbi performed the ceremony.
According to the wedding announcement, Susan attended Queen Margaret’s School in York, England, and Le Manoir in Neuchatel, Switzerland. She was married and divorced once before.
Michael Bloomberg was described as “the son of Mrs. William Henry Bloomberg of Medford, Mass., and the late Mr. Bloomberg, treasurer of the National Creamery Company, a subsidiary of Kraftco Inc.”
2. Susan Brown Is the Mother of Bloomberg’s Two Daughters, Georgina & Emma
On Instagram, Georgina Bloomberg, one of the former couple’s two daughters, describes herself as “Equestrian, author, mother, animal activist. Founder of the Rider’s Closet. Chair of Humane Generation for the Humane Society of the United States.”
Georgina shared a throwback photo of her in a Halloween costume as a kid and wrote, “#tbt Halloween 1990. My mother probably hoped I was the kind of kid who wanted to be a princess or a fairy, but this was much more fitting. ??❤️?” Georgina filled her Instagram page with photos of racehorses.
Susan encouraged her daughter’s love of horses. One throwback photo posted by Georgina shows Susan with her two daughters, both children in riding outfits. “#fbf to the 1988 Old Salem Farm Spring Show with @emma.bloomberg, and the best horse show mother that two kids could ask for. @oldsalemfarmny,” the caption reads.
According to her website, Georgina Bloomberg “is an accomplished professional show jumper based in New York City, N.Y., North Salem, N.Y., and Wellington, Fla. Bloomberg represented the United States Equestrian Team at the 2015 Pan American Games in Toronto, Canada, where she earned a Team Bronze medal.”
The bio adds that Georgina is also the co-author of “four young adult novels about the equestrian show circuit, The A Circuit, and is well known for her philanthropic efforts, particularly for her extensive animal welfare work and for founding The Rider’s Closet in 2006.”
She was “born in New York City on January 20, 1983 … the daughter of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Susan Brown.”
“An animal lover from a very young age, Bloomberg began riding at the age of 4. Her success as a child rider was notable, winning Best Child Rider awards at every major horse show on the East Coast before turning her attention exclusively to show jumping in 2001,” the bio says.
Her sister Emma Bloomberg’s Instagram profile is private. Emma is married to Chris Frissora. According to Town and Country, the more private Emma “has pursued a career in the non-profit world. She spent six and a half years at the noted Robin Hood Foundation, a leading poverty-fighting organization in New York City, before founding Murmuration.”
That company’s LinkedIn page describes it as an organization trying to change “how political campaigns, advocates, and organizers identify, engage, and mobilize people and communities. Our focus is on driving change and accelerating progress toward a future where every child in America has the opportunity to benefit from a high-quality public education.”
A bio for Emma says she “sits on the boards of the Bloomberg Family Foundation, the Robin Hood Foundation, the KIPP Foundation, New Classrooms, and Leadership for Educational Equity. She is a graduate of Princeton University, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Business School, and lives in New York City.”
Georgina is the mother of a boy named Jasper, who was born in 2013. In 2015, Emma had her first child, Zelda Violet Frissberg.
3. Susan Brown Bloomberg Recently Purchased an Expensive Condo in New York City & Is Known for Her Lavish Decorating Taste
Susan Brown and Georgina Bloomberg attend the Celebration of The Inaugural Longines Global Champions Tour Of New York with Georgina Bloomberg And The New York Empire GCL Team at Manhatta on September 28, 2019, in New York City.
According to Observer, in 2016 Susan Brown Bloomberg, called a “former downtown denizen,” had “purchased a very proper prewar condo on the Upper West Side,” across the park from Michael Bloomberg’s Fifth Avenue mansion. She made the purchase to be closer to Georgina, Observer reported, adding that the building has “oak floors, custom lighting, and a private terrace with a gas fireplace and grilling station.”
Susan previously owned “apartments at One Kenmare and, most recently, a 2,700-square-foot penthouse duplex at 41 Bond Street, which she sold last year for $11.7 million,” the article reported, adding that Susan is known for her eclectic design choices, including “large-scale dog photographs, cat figurines, and Persian rugs.” Daily News described her former penthouse as containing “ultra bold, lavish furnishings, including but not limited to expansive Persian rugs, animal print chaise lounges and purple crushed velvet drapery.”
She remains close enough friends with Michael Bloomberg that he gave her a $500,000 bridge loan to help her get an apartment, Observer reported. Brown also owns a 20-acre horse farm in Westchester County, Daily News reported.
4. Brown & Bloomberg Split When Their Lives Became Incompatible
Emma Bloomberg, Michael Bloomberg and Georgina Bloomberg.
The couple’s daughter Emma told The New York Times in 2001 that her parents argued about how much time he wasn’t home because he was “building his business and enjoying the after-hours social life it afforded him.” According to the newspaper, he would return home to spend a couple hours with his daughters and then leave again for dinner.
“They were not getting along because their lives are not compatible,” Emma, their oldest daughter, told The Times. “My mother doesn’t want to be social all of the time. She was perfectly happy to curl up with a book and not go out all week.”
The Times reported that Brown and a boyfriend volunteered on one of Bloomberg’s campaigns, and Brown, Bloomberg and their daughters continued celebrating Thanksgiving and Jewish holidays together after their divorce.
“My parents’ divorce was one of the best things that ever happened to me,” Emma once said, according to The Times. “It made my relationship with both of my parents stronger.”
5. Bloomberg Has Dated Diana Taylor, a Banking Superintendent Who Was Regarded as New York’s First Lady
Diana Taylor and Michael Bloomberg attend the Celebration of The Inaugural Longines Global Champions Tour Of New York with Georgina Bloomberg And The New York Empire GCL Team at Manhatta on September 28, 2019, in New York City.
Bloomberg has been in another long-term relationship since divorcing Brown; since 2000, he’s been dating former New York banking superintendent Diana Taylor, Biography.com reported. When Bloomberg was mayor of New York, his girlfriend was positioned a New York’s First Lady in gushing profiles from New York media praising her intellect and elegance.
In 2013, The New York Times described Taylor as already having spent “more than a dozen years as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s quietly glamorous sidekick.”
The Times described her career as “aide to Gov. George E. Pataki … superintendent of banking for the State of New York … a managing director at Wolfensohn” and reported that she “lent her financial acumen to boards as diverse as that of Citigroup and Sotheby’s, and nonprofits including the microfinance corporation Accion International and the Hudson River Park Trust.” She once considered running for public office.
According to the Times, Taylor is “a graduate of Dartmouth with an M.B.A. and a degree in public health from Columbia University.” The newspaper reported that Taylor and Bloomberg met at a Citizens Budget Commission luncheon.
Senate Republicans in New York once asked Taylor to run against Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and she briefly considered it, according to the Observer. She once told The Observer about President Barack Obama, “For somebody’s who’s going to come in and be the great unifier—you know, that hopey-changey stuff—it hasn’t worked very well. The country is more divided now than it’s ever been. And he doesn’t appreciate other people and what they do.”
The Observer reported that Taylor “self-identifies as a Republican, but is socially liberal herself, though fiscally conservative—a libertarian lite, perhaps,” quoting her as saying, “I’m socially very liberal. I don’t understand why anybody cares who marries who. I think that guns should not be in the hands of criminals, and I’m rabidly pro-choice. It’s nobody else’s business, and I’m fiscally quite conservative.”
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