Young loves are not forgotten, especially if you share that love with someone who was co-founder and CEO of one of the most important companies in the world. Chrisann Brennan was Steve Jobs’ first great love in the 70s, although his breakup and subsequent lifestyle took him completely out of the spotlight.
It’s a reverse case of Laurene Powell, Jobs’ second wife and mother of two of his three children, who still makes headlines with public events or private activities such as her recent acquisition of a mansion in San Francisco. However, Brennan’s story, as little known as it is, is also very interesting.
A high school sweetheart inspired by free love
Chrisann Brennan was born in California on September 29, 1954, almost six months before Steve Jobs, who was born on February 24, but already in 1955. And during their childhood, they didn’t even know each other. He was very close to adulthood.
Like so many other couples, Steve Jobs and Chrisann Brennan met in high school while they were still in school. It was in 1972, at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, when the two They began what we would define today as an open relationship.since for some years now, both of them have also been seeing other people.
Jobs and Brennan felt close to a hippie movement that was already beginning to decline. In fact, they both lived in communes, albeit different ones, since Jobs’ was in Oregon and Brennan’s was in California, which did not prevent him from paying frequent visits.
Back in California around 1973, they both began working with Buddhist communities. It was then that a former commune mate of Jobs, Greg Calhoun, came to visit. Brennan fell in love with him, although it is not known for sure whether they had any type of relationship.
They also took part in Steve Jobs’ now famous trip to India together. Upon their return, they settled in the San Francisco Bay Area, although Their relationship eventually broke down shortly after they returned to the United States.
Apple arrives and Jobs and Brennan’s love returns
April 1, 1976 will go down in history as the day Apple was officially and legally founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and the often-forgotten Ronald Wayne. Jobs had moved back in with his parents, and Brennan’s visits were frequent.
The Steves (Wozniak and Jobs) with the first Apple computers
And so, knowing that where there was love, there are still ashes, so they resumed their relationship. Brennan saw in Jobs a new man, or at least a very changed man, and all this as a consequence of the spiritual follow-up of the Zen master Kobun, whom she also followed.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were at the time trying to get the word out about what was already Apple’s first computer, the Apple I. It was just as the first sales were starting to come in when Jobs put Chrisann Brennan in charge of shipping costs. While this was all somewhat illegal, technically she was working for Apple.
The more successful Apple became, the more its relationship with Jobs deteriorated.
You could say that it is almost logical to imagine that when someone succeeds as well in the business field as Steve Jobs did with Apple, in the most intimate aspect, things go, at least, as well. Nothing could be further from the truth and shows how his relationship with Chrisann Brennan was going.
She would not stay long working for Apple and in 1977 she began giving environmental awareness classes. Among them, he was already living in a new house with Jobs and the relationship started to deteriorate again. Brennan felt that his partner had two other priorities in his life ahead of him, Master Kobun and Apple.
Jobs, far from wanting to abandon this relationship, made the decision to they wouldn’t live alone together. So he invited his childhood friend Daniel Kottke and they lived together for a while. As Brennan expressed years later, Jobs thought it was the best way to ease the problems in their relationship. Not being alone with the two of them gave them more oxygen. However, he was not comfortable.
I kept thinking about ending the relationship, although I never found the time. Financially, she was also struggling after losing her teaching job, which wouldn’t have provided her with enough income to live on anyway.
Pregnancy and final breakup with Jobs
In October 1977, when Chrisann Brennan had just turned 23 and was on the verge of despair, a double explosive piece of news arrived: Apple offered her a job again and she found out she was pregnant with Jobs’ baby.
Steve Jobs did not take the news well. According to what Brennan said years later, her face must have been a poem when he found out. He rejected the idea of her working at Apple while she was pregnant and also got rid of his responsibilities towards the baby. This ended up breaking up the relationship and leaving the expectant mother in a sea of doubts.
She made it clear that she did not want to abort or give the baby up for adoption. In fact, Jobs himself spoke out against this proposal, even though he did not want to take responsibility for the baby. However, her situation was complex because her relationship with her parents was broken and she was left alone to face motherhood. It was Master Kobun who finally pushed her to get it.
Chrisann Brennan and still little Lisa in 1979
And so, On May 17, 1978, Lisa Brennan Jobs was born.. We have already spoken at length about her, her life, her relationship with Jobs and her connection with the Apple Lisa, a computer that would eventually push Steve Jobs to leave Apple years later and which we still do not know today if it bears his name or not, since there are legends for all tastes.
Steve Jobs’ economic disputes
Far from taking responsibility for the newborn Lisa, Steve Jobs renounced paternity. Only a complaint and a DNA test brought him back to his senses. Not to recognize what his daughter was biologically, but also to financially compensate a Chrisann Brennan who was trying to survive with low-paid odd jobs.
However, Jobs gave him barely $500 in 1980at the same time that Apple went public and his fortune multiplied to the point of becoming the billionaire he ended up being until his death in 2011. However, with this misery, Brennan and little Lisa had a hard time supporting themselves.
Years after the Apple co-founder’s death, it emerged that Chrisann Brennan had sent him letters in 2005 and 2009 seeking damages for the suffering she had endured as a single mother. She asked for about $30 million in those letters, though the amount was ultimately settled at $25 million for her and about $5 million for her daughter.
Unlike his mother, who received nothing from the inheritance, Lisa would eventually inherit around $20 million in total if assets are added together. This amount also includes hundreds of dollars in unpaid child support, which her mother had been claiming for years. So it ended up coming in late. So late that Lisa was already in her thirties and her mother had managed to get by on her own and successfully.
What Chrisann Brennan Did After Leaving Steve Jobs
One of the most recent images of Chrisann Brennan in an interview with CNN
During this period, which includes 1978, the year his daughter was born, and up to the present day, Brennan has accumulated a net worth of around $10 million through his work after his relationship with Jobs. And everything related to art, whether it’s writing or, fundamentally, painting.
Precisely the year that Jobs “compensated” her with that $500 after Apple’s IPO, and without leaving her native California, Brennan decided to complete her education to get an art degree. In fact, she admitted to asking Jobs for financial help to be able to enroll, and despite the fact that the dispute over Lisa’s support persisted, he agreed.
As soon as the race was over, he was able to start support himself financially through his paintings. A somewhat variable income, but which allowed him to progress thanks to a lesser extent to exhibitions in small galleries and mainly to his work creating murals for private centers and parties.
In 2013, he published his memoirs in a book titled “A Bite in the Apple.”a play on the English word for the double meaning of “bite” (referring to how computer data is measured and the literal translation of “bite”). It was partly through this book that they learned about his disputes with Jobs and how he was able to move forward.
The Bite into the Apple: Memoirs of My Life with Steve Jobs (English Edition)
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Today, even though she is just days away from turning 70, Chrisann Brennan continues to devote himself to art. Of course, there is no information about exhibitions, so we remain focused on work for private companies.
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