Mary Buffett might not have left her marriage with a lifetime of See’s Candies. Still, she did gain something equally valuable: an insider’s perspective on Warren Buffett’s investing genius.
Married to Warren’s son, Peter, from 1980 to 1993, Mary wasn’t just an observer; she absorbed the legendary investor’s philosophies and made them her own, eventually turning her experience into a successful career as an author, speaker and educator.
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In a 2019 ThinkAdvisor interview, Mary Buffett offered a glimpse into what it was like to be the daughter-in-law of the billionaire ‘Oracle of Omaha.’
In the early days, Mary had little idea how singular Warren’s approach to life – and gift-giving – would be. When she joined the Buffett family, she admits she assumed perks like endless See’s Candies would be part of the package. “When I married him, the only thing I knew was that his father owned See’s Candies,” she recalled. “So when we got married, I was like, great – free candy! Never knowing that there was no free candy with Warren.” Instead of sweets, Mary got a front-row seat to the value-investing strategies that have defined Warren’s career.
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Though she’d already had a solid foundation in business from her work at Columbia Records to running music publishing at Hugh Hefner’s company, Warren’s relentless focus on investing soon became a major influence in her life.
Mary says that investing was pretty much all he talked about. She shared in the interview, “That’s all he talked about! A couple of times a year we’d go to Omaha and he’d come home and get right on the phone, talking to either Mrs. [Katharine] Graham of the Washington Post or Stan Lipsey [publisher] of The Buffalo News [which Buffett bought in 1977]. He’d be on the phone when you were in the den with him.”
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Holidays with the Buffetts were a mini business summit, where conversations with industry titans flowed over dinner instead of eggnog. “When the family got together in Laguna over Christmastime, all the industry titans would be there: We’d have lunches and dinners and they’d all talk about companies. Investing was the only thing Warren ever talked about!” she said.
