Mark Zuckerberg originally created Facebook to rate his female Harvard university classmates after one of them rejected him.
But his bad luck with dating would turn around shortly afterwards, when he met Priscilla Chan in the queue for the toilet at a house party in 2003.
Mark’s fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi, was hosting the party and Priscilla, who was in her second year of university, was on the guestlist.
Because of the furore surrounding Facemash, the earliest version of Facebook where users would upvote or downvote their female peers, Mark was convinced he was about to be kicked out of Harvard – so he was doubly keen to get a girlfriend before that happened.
“I’m going to get kicked out in three days, so we need to go on a date quickly,” Mark admitted he told Priscilla.
But biology student Priscilla was instantly taken with “nerdy” Mark – and the rest was history.
“He was this nerdy guy who was just a little bit out there,” she told The New Yorker.
Mark Zuckerberg met Priscilla Chan while they were studying at Harvard (
“I remember he had these beer glasses that said ‘pound include beer dot H.’ It’s a tag for C++. It’s like college humour but with a nerdy, computer-science appeal.”
The brainy duo went on their first date, though Priscilla was initially “appalled” by Mark’s admission that he would ” rather go on a date with [her] than finish his take-home midterm”.
“The type-A first child in me was appalled,” she joked.
Mark dropped out of Harvard soon after to focus on growing Facebook, which Priscilla, 36, was one of the first people to join.
The couple moved to California and Priscilla attended medical school, renting an apartment where Mark would visit her at the weekend.
Even at this early stage in their relationship, Mark, 37, was working long hours while Facebook exploded across the world, and he had limited free time.
So they created a strict rule which they still adhere to to this day – a minimum of 100 minutes of alone time together per week not at Facebook’s headquarters, and a weekly date night.
The couple tied the knot in a surprisingly frugal ceremony in 2012 (Image: REUTERS)
Weekly date nights and scheduled alone time have kept their marriage going strong
During those dates, Mark has revealed he and his wife will go for walks together, go rowing (but only in separate boats) and play board games.
Mark married Priscilla in 2012 in a surprisingly low-key and frugal wedding – the ring only cost $25,000, which is a drop in the ocean for a multi-billionaire, while the food was sourced from local restaurants and Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong performed for free.
The Facebook CEO has said that, even with the billions of dollars he has made, their relationship was the greatest thing to come from his invention.
“Without Facemash, I wouldn’t have met Priscilla,” he said in his Harvard commencement address in 2017.
“She’s the most important person in my life, so you could say it was the most important thing I built in my time here.”
And former paediatrician Priscilla is a big part of Mark’s business decision-making, including when he turned down a $1billion offer from Yahoo to buy Facebook in 2006.
“I remember we had a huge conversation over the Yahoo! deal,” Priscilla explained to the New Yorker.
