Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, lost her husband Dave Goldberg last Saturday in a what appears to be a tragic accident. Goldberg died suddenly at the age of 47 from
trauma to the head while exercising. Sandberg, known for her wise words to women in the workplace, had some really touching things to say about her late husband.
The couple met in 1996 but didn’t develop a relationship until 2001 and married in 2004. Her telling and inspirational quote, “The most important career decision you’ll make is who you marry,” can serve as a sort of prologue to everything she has said about their own personal marriage.
She often talks about balance, not just work-life balance but how husbands and wives should help each other balance work and life, something I, and most couples, admire.
She wrote of him in her book: “Dave and I have had our share of bumps on our path to achieving a roughly 50-50 split,” she continues. “After a lot of effort and seemingly endless discussion, we are partners not just in what we do, but in who is in charge. Each of us makes sure that things that need to get done do indeed get done. We are never at 50-50 at any given moment… but we allow the pendulum to swing back and forth between us.”
Our hearts go out to Sheryl, and her family. These quotes about Dave, in her own words, paint the perfect picture about what we expect a marriage should feel like.
In Dave Goldberg’s memory:
1. “The best decision I ever made was to marry Dave.”
2. “He was the first person to show me the internet, the kind of friend who shows up to help you move apartments (read: bad pre-Dave breakup), and always made me feel like I was home no matter where I was.”
3. “He’s the best partner I could imagine — even though he’s wrong about my TV shows being bad.”
4. “People frequently pull me aside to ask sympathetically, ‘How is Dave? Is he OK with, you know, all your [whispering] success?’ Dave is far more self-confident than I am, and given his own professional success, these comments are easy for him to brush off.”
5. “Dave had to get up when the baby cried, bring him to be fed, change him and then get him back to sleep,” she wrote. “Dave taught me how to change a diaper when our son was 8 days old.”
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