Steve Jobs Kept Private Life Closely Guarded Secret

Oct. 6, 2011— -- Though he was one of the world's most famous CEOs, Steve Jobs kept his private world -- wife and family, illegitimate daughter, father who gave him up for adoption, long lost sister -- hidden from public view.

Since the founding of Apple Computer in 1976, fans and the media grasped for any hint at the personal life of the man in the black turtleneck, trying to piece together what they could of the reclusive innovator.

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But Jobs was so successful at keeping the details of his life out of the celebrity pages that a Pew poll in June 2010 found that only 41 percent of Americans correctly identified Jobs as head of Apple. A CBS poll that year concluded that 69 percent of Americans didn't know enough about Jobs to have an opinion about him.

In the wake of his death, stories about Jobs' private life once again became fodder for his fans, who wondered, in part, where Jobs' $6.7 billion fortune would land.

Steve Jobs Secretive Private Life

Jobs most public display of a personal life included his wife, Laurene Powell, and their three children: Reed Paul, Erin Sienna, and Eve. Powell and Jobs had been married for more than 20 years. The two were married in a small Buddhist ceremony in Yosemite National Park in 1991, and lived in Woodside, Calif.

But prior to married life, Jobs had played the field.

In college, Jobs dated singer Joan Baez, according to Elizabeth Holmes, a friend and classmate. In "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs," Holmes tells biographer Alan Deutschman that Jobs broke up with his serious girlfriend to "begin an affair with the charismatic singer-activist." Holmes confirmed these details to ABC News.

Deutschman's book also says Jobs went on a blind date with Diane Keaton; went out with Lisa Birnbach, author of "The Preppy Handbook;" and hand delivered computers to celebrities he admired.

He also had a less well-known family life. He has a daughter, Lisa Brennan Jobs, born in 1978 with his high school girlfriend, Chris Ann Brennan.

Fortune magazine reported that Jobs denied paternity of Lisa for years, at one point swearing in a court document that he was infertile and could not have children. According to the report, Chris Ann Brennan collected welfare for a time to support the child, until Jobs later acknowledged Lisa as his daughter.

Jobs' reluctance to accept Lisa is ironic since he was given up for adoption as a child and has refused to speak to his biological father, despite the father's efforts to contact Jobs.

Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, a Syrian man who fathered Jobs, had emailed his son a few times in a tentative effort to make contact. The father never called the son because he feared Jobs would think the dad who had given him up was now after his fortune.

And Jobs never responded to his father's emails.

"I really don't have anything to say," Jandali, vice president at Boomtown Hotel Casino in Reno, Nev., told the International Business Times when asked about his son's death.

Jandali, a Syrian immigrant, had been quoted by the New York Post recently saying he didn't know until just a few years ago that the baby he and his ex-wife, Joanne Simpson, gave up grew to be Apple's CEO.

Jandali told the Post that had it been his choice, he would have kept the baby. But Simpson's father did not approve of her marrying a Syrian, so she moved to San Francisco to have the baby alone and give him up for adoption.

Jandali, who is 80, said at the time that he would have been happy to just have a cup of coffee with the son he never knew before it was too late. Stories of Jobs' battle with a form of pancreatic cancer and his liver transplant were public and Jobs' health had deteriorated to the point where he was forced to resign as CEO of Apple.

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He was quoted as saying, "This might sound strange, though, but I am not prepared, even if either of us was on our deathbeds, to pick up the phone to call him."

Jobs also had a biological sister with whom he became close in later years. Mona Simpson, the acclaimed writer of books like "Anywhere But Here," offered Jobs information on his birth parents and wrote a book based on their relationship entitled "A Regular Guy."

Though Simpson had a relationship with their 80-year-old biological father, Jobs rebuffed him to the end.