Google co-founder's wedding so secret, guests didn't know locale

By Scott Duke HarrisMercury NewsArticle Launched: 05/17/2007 01:29:50 AM PDTClick photo to enlargeAnne Wojcicki recently married Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. (Courtesy of Esther Dyson)Related StoriesGoogle co-founder Sergey Brin and longtime sweetheart Anne Wojcicki, a biotechentrepreneur, exchanged vows recently in the Bahamas, guests confirmed to the Mercury News, in a ceremony so hush-hush that word didn't leak out for more than a week.Even the date remains secret: All sources would say was that it occurred sometime fromMay 4 to May 6.The ceremony combined the unconventional and traditional. The bride and groom andother members of the wedding party wore swimsuits,

the better to get to an offshoresandbar, while other guests rode a boat. The bride wore white and the groom black, butotherwise the attire was not coordinated. About 60 guests attended, one of whomdescribed the scene as "beautifully colorful."In accordance with their Jewish heritage, the couple, both of whom are 33, were wedunder the traditional canopy, the

chuppah

, and Brin stomped on a glass symbolizing their connection to the faith. The ritual was performed by two friends, neither of whom arerabbis.

Most guests reached by the Mercury News spoke on the condition of anonymity or declined comment. Brin's 83-year-old grandmother, Maya, speaking in a heavy Russianaccent in a telephone interview, said the wedding was "very, very" nice before referringquestions to Brin's parents. Michael Brin, a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland and father of the groom, declined comment. Brin's mother works as a researchscientist at NASA's Goddard Space FlightThe media's interest created a dilemma for the bride's mother, who declined commenteven though Esther Wojcicki, a former newspaper reporter, is a much honored journalismteacher at Palo Alto High School. Wojcicki (pronounced woe-JIT-ski) is widely known as"Woj."The father of the bride, Stanford physics Professor Stan Wojcicki, evidently was low keywith colleagues. When a caller Tuesday left a cryptic message of congratulations for the professor, his assistant, Judy Meo, assumed something exciting happened in Wojcicki'sneutrino research work."I just knew he was in the Bahamas for his daughter's wedding," Meo said later. "He keptit very quiet." Including, she said, the identity of the groom, who with a net worthestimated at more than $16.6 billion ranks as one of America's richest men.The Wojcicki family lives on the Stanford campus. Anne, the youngest of three sisters, isa graduate of Gunn High School in Palo Alto who earned a degree in biology from YaleUniversity. She did molecular biology research at the National Institutes of Health andUniversity of California-San Diego before working as a health care consultant for Passport Capital, a San Francisco investment fund.The secrecy surrounding the ceremony was extensive. Wedding guests who boarded the jetliner owned by Brin and Google co-founder Larry Page on May 4 were not told thedestination, for instance.Silicon Valley cognescenti, however, have known about the Wojcicki-Brin relationshipfor some time. It is a kind of only-in-Silicon Valley romance - a tale of two brainyentrepreneurial spirits that involves a garage.The garage was part of a rented Menlo Park house that Susan Wojcicki, then a recentUCLA business school grad, sublet to Brin and business partner Larry Page in 1998, after they had left a Stanford graduate program to launch Google. They knew Susan throughBrin's girlfriend at the time and, later, Susan introduced Brin to her sister Anne.