Warren Buffett has never pretended to eat healthy. For decades, he’s bragged about his love of McDonald’s breakfasts, Dairy Queen sundaes, and five cans of Coca-Cola a day. “I checked the actuarial tables,” he told Fortune in 2015, “and the lowest death rate is among six-year-olds. So I decided to eat like a six-year-old.” But when his wife, Susie, was diagnosed with oral cancer, Buffett quietly changed everything.
According to Alice Schroeder’s biography “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life,” Susie was restricted to a liquid-only diet following surgery and radiation. Buffett, known for dodging anything health-related, chose to scale back in solidarity. “That can’t be a lot of fun,” he told Schroeder. “So I won’t have any fun either.” He cut his own intake, not because he needed to—but because she couldn’t eat. The same man who once said he’d give up a year of life before giving up ice cream put his routines on pause, out of love.
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For someone who used to change the subject at the mention of a cold, Buffett’s transformation was dramatic. Schroeder wrote that he studied oncology, sat with Susie in her San Francisco apartment every weekend, and watched nearly 100 episodes of Frasier as she recovered. There were no cameras, no press statements. Just a man doing what he could for the woman he loved.
Their marriage wasn’t typical, and they never pretended it was. Susie moved to San Francisco in the late 1970s to pursue a singing career. She and Warren never divorced, but they lived apart for the rest of her life. It was Susie who introduced him to Astrid Menks, the woman who would become his second wife. Astrid moved into the Omaha, Nebraska, home, helped manage his household, and even joined Susie and Warren on holiday cards. In a 2006 interview with The New York Times, their daughter, Susie Buffett Jr., said, “Unconventional is not a bad thing… It just worked.”
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What also worked, oddly enough, was the emotional structure they built together. Susie remained Buffett’s closest confidant, a key voice in his life and his philanthropic decisions. She pushed him toward causes like civil rights and family planning and laid the groundwork for what would become the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. Buffett, in turn, credited her with shaping his values.
