Astrid Menks Biography

Astrid Menks is a Latvian-American philanthropist and former cocktail waitress who is married to billionaire business magnate Warren Buffett. After spending a considerable part of her early life in her home country of Latvia, Menks moved to the US in pursuit of the proverbial American dream. In the 1970s, she was working as a waitress at a cocktail bar when she met Buffett for the first time. Incidentally, his first wife, Susan Thompson, had previously resumed her career as a nightclub singer at the same bar. Thompson later decided to move to San Francisco to further her career and told the girls at the club to take care of Buffett. In time, Menks emerged as the most consistent among them. She would bring him soup and within a year, she moved in with him. In the subsequent years, Buffett, Thompson, and Menks shared a complex relationship. He never divorced Thompson but had a relationship with Menks as well. As Buffett became one of the richest men in the world, Thompson took the helm of his charitable foundation. Menks, on the other hand, took care of him at home. In 2004, Thompson passed away. Menks and Buffett married two years later, after spending nearly three decades together.