Barbara Boothe played a pivotal but often overlooked role in Larry Ellison’s personal life. As his third wife and the mother of his only two children, she helped shape the Ellison family line. Boothe married Ellison in 1983 and bore him a son, David, and a daughter, Megan. Both children have since become successful film producers, carrying on Ellison’s name in the entertainment world. She is a central figure in Ellison’s family narrative. She and Larry Ellison had David and Megan during Ellison’s formative years at Oracle.
Early life of Barbara Boothe
Little is publicly documented about Boothe’s early life or background. Most sources simply highlight her job at Ellison’s company, without detailing her personal history. For example, one biographical profile of Ellison refers to her only as a former receptionist at RSI, Relational Software Inc., which later became Oracle.
Likewise, news accounts mention that she worked as a receptionist at one of his companies, but they do not give details about her education, family, or date of birth. In short, her childhood and upbringing remain private for the most part, with available records focusing on her role in Ellison’s world rather than her life before meeting him.
Meeting and marrying Ellison
Barbara Boothe met Larry through her work at his company. By the early 1980s, he had founded a database software firm, RSI/Oracle, and she was employed there as a receptionist. The two began a relationship that quickly became serious. In January 1983, she gave birth to Ellison’s son, David. Sources indicate that she was already pregnant when she and Ellison got married.
One account notes that she pressed Ellison to marry her before the baby turned one. The couple married later in 1983. Three years after David’s birth, she had a second child: a daughter, Megan, born on January 31, 1986. Thus, Boothe’s marriage to Ellison produced two children in quick succession, framing her early married life around motherhood.
Life as the wife of the Oracle founder
Boothe’s tenure as Ellison’s wife, 1983 to 1986, coincided with a period of rapid change in Ellison’s career. As he was building his company into a tech powerhouse, Barbara Boothe was raising their two small children. Notably, 1986 was the year when Megan was born and the year when RSI went public and formally became Oracle. During these years, Ellison’s fortune grew dramatically. By 1986, his stake was worth about $90 million, yet Boothe herself remained out of the limelight.
There are few records of her personal role beyond being a wife and mother. In fact, biographical sources and news reports focus almost entirely on Ellison’s business while only briefly mentioning her presence. She did not hold an executive position or court public attention. Instead, she accompanied Ellison privately and focused on family life. By the time they divorced in 1986, Oracle was a $55 million company, but her own profile remained low. In photographs and media coverage from that period. She is usually identified simply as Ellison’s spouse or the mother of his children.
Raising David and Megan
As a mother, Barbara Boothe nurtured her children’s emerging passions. David Ellison’s biography explicitly notes that he grew up in Woodside, California, with his mother, who nurtured his love for film. Boothe often exposed the family to the arts and cinema, encouraging David and Megan’s creative interests. Both children later attended film school at USC and launched entertainment careers, reflecting her early influence.
David founded Skydance Media and started producing blockbuster films, notably Top Gun: Maverick (2022), earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture. Megan founded Annapurna Pictures and became known for producing acclaimed films like Zero Dark Thirty, Her, and American Hustle. In 2014, she became the first woman ever to receive two Academy Award nominations for Best Picture.
Boothe accompanied her children to events, demonstrating her support of their careers. While raising David and Megan, she laid the foundation for their success, and both have acknowledged their parents’ encouragement in pursuing film.
Shaping the children’s futures
After Boothe and Ellison separated, it was she who became the full-time parent. She raised both children almost entirely on her own, working to give them a stable upbringing away from Silicon Valley’s spotlight.
Key influences:
Chores and responsibility
Barbara Boothe taught the children discipline. The Los Angeles Times reports that she gave young David weekly chores and only a $5 allowance in return, saying this provided them with “grounding, a steady influence” as their father’s wealth grew.
Passion for movies
Barbara Boothe also cultivated her children’s love of film. Every weekend, the family attended movie premieres, and the house had a vast video library (over 2,000 films). These experiences nurtured David and Megan’s imaginations and later guided them toward careers in Hollywood.
Under her guidance, the Ellison children built strong foundations. David Ellison, for example, later recalled that his mother provided a sense of normalcy and responsibility during his childhood. Today, he runs Skydance Media, and his sister runs Annapurna Pictures, but both have credited their early “grounding” to their mother.
In interviews, they have noted that Barbara kept them motivated with chores and passed on a love of storytelling through film outings. In short, her day-to-day parenting, though rarely reported in the press, was the driving force behind their work ethic and creativity.
Divorce and life afterward
In 1986, when David was 3 years old and baby Megan was just 3 months old, Barbara Boothe filed for divorce from Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison and Barbara Boothe divorced after three years of marriage. Their split took place amid Oracle’s early phase of growth. After the split, she retained custody of the children and continued to raise them at the family’s horse ranch in Woodside. According to accounts, he stepped back from day-to-day parenting but made sure his ex-wife had financial support.
Ellison placed large blocks of Oracle stock into trust funds for each child, ensuring they would inherit wealth when they came of age. Meanwhile, Barbara Boothe managed the household and oversaw the children’s education and upbringing. One profile notes that the children were “raised primarily by their mother” during these years.
In effect, she provided the stable home life that Ellison’s busy career could not. She saw the children through preschool and grade school, emphasized their studies and values, and kept them grounded in their father’s absence.
- Custody and support: Boothe remained the primary caregiver after the divorce. Larry Ellison’s role became mainly financial; he maintained contact and later helped fund college and career expenses.
- Farm life: The family’s Woodside estate, complete with horses and countryside, became a sanctuary. She continued to run the ranch where the children played and learned. The environment was intentionally low-profile, despite the family’s wealth, helping David and Megan grow up with a relatively normal childhood.
Unlike Ellison’s later spouses, she did not remarry in the public record or pursue a visible career. She focused on raising David and Megan rather than seeking media attention. There are no interviews, news profiles, or official biographies that offer insight into her activities after 1986. Available sources contain no record of her professional or personal pursuits in subsequent years, suggesting that she chose privacy and family over public life.
Current life away from the spotlight
In the decades since her divorce, Boothe has led a quiet life centered on equestrian pursuits. She turned her lifelong love of horses into a full-time career. In 1989, she founded Wild Turkey Farm, a warmblood horse breeding farm originally located in Woodside, California. The Wild Turkey Farm website notes that the Oregon native “has expanded the farm into a world-class breeding operation,” and eventually moved it to a 220-acre facility in Wilsonville, Oregon. There she still lives and works, raising and training show horses. In fact, she is known within the horse community as “Barb Ellison” and has won accolades in that field. For example, in 2020, she received the Mrs. A.C. Randolph Owner’s Legacy Award from the U.S. Hunter/Jumper Association.
The award announcement explicitly refers to “Barbara Boothe Ellison,” confirming that this is the same person. Beyond these industry mentions, she has otherwise stayed out of public view. She does not seek media attention; her life in Oregon is largely private.
Barbara’s lasting legacy in the Ellison family
Today, Barbara Boothe’s most enduring legacy is her two children. Both David and Megan Ellison have continued to elevate the Ellison name through high-profile successes in the entertainment world. David’s work as a producer has earned him industry visibility. Megan’s Annapurna Pictures, on the other hand, has produced multiple Oscar-nominated films, and she herself was named to Time’s 100 most influential people in 2014. She’s also the first woman to secure two Best Picture Oscar nominations in the same year,
Her achievements underscore the creative vision Boothe helped foster in her children. In interviews, the Ellison siblings have credited both parents with support in their upbringing, reflecting Boothe’s role behind the scenes. In summary, while Barbara Boothe avoided the spotlight, her impact lives on through David and Megan. They carry her influence into the entertainment industry, ensuring that her contribution to the Ellison family, as wife, mother, and mentor, endures.
Outlook
Sources and reports of public records confirm that Barbara Boothe chose a private life. She stepped back from the limelight following her 1986 divorce from Larry and concentrated on raising their two children, David and Megan Ellison. As Barbara Boothe never pursued a public life nor granted lengthy interview opportunities, the most authentic and lasting evidence of her influence is evident through her children’s lives and career paths.
Both of them have had successful, documented careers in film production. David is at Skydance, and Megan is at Annapurna Pictures. Their public successes are repeatedly traced back, in profiles and interviews, to their parents’ encouragement and upbringing.
In prospect from the strictly evidentiary viewpoint, Boothe’s public legacy will continue to be channeled through the Ellison family’s visible members and the earlier-established record about Oracle and its founding father. Archival biographies, company histories, and David and Megan’s profiles will continue to bring up Boothe’s part in their early lives since the sources will continue to mention her as the mother of Ellison’s children.
Myths and misconceptions about Barbara Boothe
Since public figures attract rumors, let’s clear up a few common misconceptions about Barbara Boothe that sometimes circulate online:
Myth: 1
Barbara Boothe is a public figure and a large media personality
False. Her public life is extremely limited. She was never a public commentator, nor was she a media personality. Public records consist largely of biographical notes relating to Ellison and the children.
Myth: 2
David and Megan were solely raised by Larry Ellison
Although Ellison was predictably a figure of influence and procurement, several of the profiles portray Barbara Boothe as the children’s predominant parental figure in the early years of the children’s lives. Their upbringing involved both of these parental figures in varying roles.
Myth: 3
This marriage framed Ellison’s public life
It didn’t. His public biography is overshadowed by his business career and subsequent relationships. His marriage to Barbara Boothe is significant only since she gave birth to his children, not because it redefined his corporate course.
How scholars and media respond to a figure like Barbara Boothe
When describing the partners of entrepreneurs who themselves shunned public life, commentators and historians have to exercise both curiosity and restraint. There is always temptation to speculate and fill in the gaps, but the appropriate ethical answer is to rely on documented facts, referring at first instance in most cases to primary sources and omitting intrusive speculation over motives, private lives, or unverified rumors.
In the case of Barbara Boothe, we’ve worked with marriage records, birth dates, and profiles that include direct quotes by children or peers. This includes working within the constraints of public records, too. We don’t have a memoir, public interviews, or firsthand evidence from Boothe. We only have records of her motherhood and an unmistakable throughline in which her children, raised in part by her, grew up and became major figures in their own right, culturally speaking.
Conclusion
Barbara Boothe’s public life demonstrates humility. She has come up in respectable sources as Larry Ellison’s wife in the early to mid-1980s and the mother of his two sons, David (born in 1983) and Megan (born in 1986). Recent news articles and subsequent biographical summations feature her place in the family at a key chapter of Ellison’s career at Oracle, but little of her life before and after that is in print.
It is evident that Barbara Boothe was at the heart of the Ellison family. She was a positive force among them through motherhood and early family life. David and Megan have openly pointed to their upbringings as a crucial foundation for their artistic aspirations.
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