11. Justine

In the 1990s, Palo Alto became a back­drop to the unfold­ing romance between Elon Musk and Jus­tine Wil­son. Their sto­ry, ripe with the ingre­di­ents of a clas­sic romance dra­ma, began at Queen’s Uni­ver­si­ty. Musk, a sopho­more, and Wil­son, then using her birth name Jen­nifer and a fresh­man, shared a love for the intel­lec­tu­al — he in tech­nol­o­gy and she in dark fan­ta­sy nov­els. Their ini­tial inter­ac­tion was quaint yet telling of Musk’s per­sis­tence; after being stood up for an ice cream date, he found Wil­son with her favorite vanil­la-choco­late-chip ice cream, a ges­ture that marked the begin­ning of their com­plex rela­tion­ship.

Wil­son, amidst end­ing a rela­tion­ship with a seem­ing­ly cool­er indi­vid­ual, was drawn to Musk’s indomitable will and ambi­tion, which was­n’t tied to the pur­suit of wealth but to solv­ing sig­nif­i­cant prob­lems. Despite a phys­i­cal sep­a­ra­tion, with Musk mov­ing to Penn and Wil­son to Japan, their con­nec­tion endured, rekin­dled by Musk’s call from New York City. This led Wil­son to leave for Cal­i­for­nia, mov­ing into Musk’s Palo Alto apart­ment, a hum­ble dwelling shared with house­mates and a dachs­hund named Bowie.

Their rela­tion­ship, described by Musk and Wil­son them­selves, thrived on dra­ma and the chal­lenge of intel­lec­tu­al and per­son­al dif­fer­ences. Musk’s pro­pos­al, rem­i­nis­cent of a scene from the very romance nov­els Wil­son aspired to write, was pre­dic­tive of their tumul­tuous future togeth­er. Their love was char­ac­ter­ized by fierce debates and dis­agree­ments, a mir­ror to the com­bat­ive nature Musk exhib­it­ed in his pro­fes­sion­al pur­suits. One notable argu­ment in Paris over the inter­pre­ta­tion of the Lady and the Uni­corn tapes­tries epit­o­mized their dynam­ic, high­light­ing Musk’s ten­den­cy to fierce­ly defend his view­points.

As mar­riage loomed, con­cerns from Musk’s close cir­cle emerged, under­scor­ing the appre­hen­sion about the union’s sta­bil­i­ty. Despite these warn­ings and a prenup­tial agree­ment caus­ing an ini­tial strain, their wed­ding pro­ceed­ed in Jan­u­ary 2000 on the Caribbean island of Saint Mar­tin. This chap­ter of their lives, enveloped in the aspi­ra­tional and the tur­bu­lent, cap­tures Musk’s ear­ly days through the lens of per­son­al rela­tion­ships, lay­ing a foun­da­tion for his lat­er endeav­ors.