Person of the Week: Melinda Gates

June 30, 2006 — -- You may have heard that investment and insurance billionaire Warren Buffett is giving more than $30 billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. You also have probably heard a lot about Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. But it is the other half of this famous couple, Bill's wife Melinda, whom we recognize this week.

"Bill and I are absolutely honored and humbled by Warren's gift," Melinda said. "We feel an incredible responsibility. I think when you give away your own wealth, it's one thing, but to give away the body of someone else's life's work is really quite something."

The powerful couple started their foundation together, working to provide health care for impoverished nations, eradicate malaria and build libraries.

"I wouldn't be doing the foundation if it wasn't for her, and she's really shaped where we're going with it," Bill Gates said.

It was during a trip to Africa in 1993 that Melinda said her eyes were opened to the crisis of global health. Since then, AIDS has been the foremost issue on her agenda, she said.

"Whether it takes us 15 years, 20 years, 25 years to get an AIDS vaccine, it is what will break the back of the disease," she said.

Born and raised in Dallas, Melinda Gates earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from Duke University. In 1987, she moved to Seattle for a job with Microsoft, working her way up to product manager. That's when she met the boss.

"We dated for a number of years off and on, and eventually, when it was clear to both of us that we thought we were both good partners to one another," she said, "we were on a pretty special trip to California and he proposed to me then."

They were married in 1994, and Melinda now splits her time between caring for the couple's three children and working at the foundation.

"We talk a lot in our household … that we have a responsibility as a family to give back to the world," Melinda said on "Good Morning America." "We've talked a lot already to our children … when we go to Africa, about what we are doing there. I think they're gonna feel great about sharing this responsibility as a family."