George Lucas Met His Wife at a Business Conference
Most consider George Lucas one of the all-time great American filmmakers. He’s the creative force behind the Star Wars franchise as well as the Indiana Jones series. And to many fans, he’s a true pioneer behind the genre of blockbuster films. Lucas started making films in the ’60s, going on to produce the cult classic American Graffiti, and in 1977, his life changed forever with the release of his surprise hit Star Wars. While Lucas’ personal life doesn’t make headlines like his professional projects, he met his second wife in a surprising way.
George Lucas and his first wife were married for more than a decade
Lucas is on his second marriage. First came Marcia Lou Griffin, who worked in the entertainment industry as a film editor. They married in 1969. She worked alongside her husband on his movie projects, including the 1977 blockbuster Star Wars. Lucas and Griffin adopted a daughter in 1981.
In 1983, Lucas and Griffin divorced after nearly 15 years of marriage. After the divorce, Lucas went on to adopt two more children as a single parent: Katie Lucas, adopted in 1988, and Jett Lucas, whom he adopted in 1993.
When did George Lucas meet his second wife?
Lucas would go on to find love again after his divorce from Griffin. Around 2006, Lucas met then-DreamWorks Animation chair Mellody Hobson at a business conference, according to Us Weekly. The two hit it off right from the start, and to Lucas, their meeting was incredibly fortuitous. “How else would a financial person and movie person ever be at the same place at the same time?” Lucas mused in a 2012 interview with Oprah Winfrey.
In January 2013, after six years of dating, Lucas and Hobson announced their engagement. They married just a few months later, at Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch in California. Lucas and Hobson have been together ever since, even as major changes have occurred for Lucas professionally — including the sale of Lucasfilm to The Walt Disney Company in 2012.
George Lucas has been with Mellody Hobson since 2006
Even though Lucas was already a father to three children by the time he married Hobson, the newlyweds wanted to expand their family by welcoming a child together. In August 2013, three months after their wedding, the Star Wars creator and Hobson welcomed a baby girl via gestational surrogate. While Lucas and Hobson keep most of their personal life out of the spotlight, they’ve revealed a few rare glimpses at their happy home life.
In a 2020 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Hobson, who is still a high-powered businesswoman, revealed how she benefits from Lucas’s wisdom, and how his insights helped her to gain perspective during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The joke I make with people is, I married Yoda’s dad,” Hobson said. “My husband is very, very wise and in the early days of being inside, I was a little whiny and he looked at me one day and he said, ‘You know Mellody, Europeans lived in bunkers for five years during World War II.’ That just hit me super hard.” Hobson went on to detail how Lucas allows her to see things through a larger lens, telling her anecdotes that “anchor” her in and helping to make any difficult situation that much better.
