Steve Jobs didn’t just miss out on a relationship with his biological father — he unknowingly shook his hand and tipped him generously.
In a twist that sounds almost too ironic to be real, Jobs once ate at a Mediterranean restaurant in Silicon Valley managed by a man from Syria. They exchanged pleasantries, nothing more. The man later described one of his customers — Jobs — as “a great tipper.” What he didn’t know? That man was his son.
This surreal overlap came to light years later through a recording shared by Jobs’s biographer, Walter Isaacson, on a 2011 episode of 60 Minutes. According to Isaacson, as reported by The New York Times, Jobs had located his birth mother, Joanne Simpson, in the mid-1980s. Through her, he discovered he had a sister, Mona Simpson, a writer living in New York. The two formed a close bond, but Jobs drew a hard line when it came to their biological father, Abdulfattah “John” Jandali.
Don’t Miss:
“I learned a little bit about him, and I didn’t like what I learned,” Jobs said in the recording. He was especially upset by Jandali’s early abandonment of Mona and their mother.
But Mona, curious to fill in the gaps, eventually found their father. By then, Jandali was managing a restaurant in Sacramento. When she visited, he casually bragged that Jobs used to eat there often and was “a great tipper.” He had no idea he was talking about his own son.
Jobs later recalled that encounter: “I remembered being in that restaurant a couple of times. I shook his hand and he shook my hand — and that’s all.”
They never saw each other again. According to Isaacson, Jandali didn’t find out the truth until 2006 — long after the brief restaurant run-in and long after the chance for a real father-son relationship had passed.
Trending: The secret weapon in billionaire investor portfolios that you almost certainly don’t own yet. See which asset class has outpaced the S&P 500 (1995-2024) – and with near-zero correlation.
It’s the kind of detail that reads like a scene out of a screenplay: two people bound by blood, unknowingly crossing paths, never realizing the connection — one leaving a generous tip, the other left with a story about a polite customer who once ate the hummus.
According to the Wall Street Journal, once Jandali realized the truth, he quietly attempted to reach out to Jobs in the final years of his life — mostly through short, polite emails. He reportedly wished Jobs happy birthday and good health. Jobs occasionally responded with brief replies like “Thank you,” but kept his distance.
The Daily Mail revealed that in the months leading up to Jobs’s death, Jandali became overwhelmed with guilt about abandoning his son. But after so many years, he admitted he was too proud to make the first move.
He feared Jobs might think he was only after money — and, as it turns out, his instincts weren’t far off. In the biography, Isaacson quoted Jobs as saying he “didn’t trust him not to try to blackmail me or go to the press about it.”
Although he never picked up the phone, Jandali said in interviews that he still hoped for a reunion “before it is too late.” But ultimately, it never happened.
See Also: Many are surprised by Mark Cuban’s advice for lotto winners: Cash or annuity?
Jobs, for his part, made peace with his choice. He told Isaacson that Paul and Clara Jobs — the couple who raised him — were his “real parents 1,000%.” And while the missed connection with his biological father makes for a dramatic story, it was one Jobs never felt compelled to rewrite.
He died in 2011 at the age of 56, having briefly crossed paths with the man who gave him life — a stranger at the time, and never more than that. Whatever his reasons, Jobs chose to keep that distance. It was his decision, his boundary, and maybe even his peace.
Although they exchanged only a few words, never knowing the full story, it’s one of those strange twists life offers — two lives colliding without either realizing it. As Jobs once said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward.”
And sometimes, you might not even want to.
Read Next: Over the last five years, the price of gold has increased by approximately 83% — Investors like Bill O’Reilly and Rudy Giuliani are using this platform to create customized gold IRAs to help shield their savings from inflation and economic turbulence.
Image: Shutterstock
UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets.
Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga?
This article Steve Jobs Was Adopted And Unknowingly Dined At His Birth Father’s Restaurant — His Dad Remembered Him Only As ‘A Great Tipper’ originally appeared on Benzinga.com
© 2025 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
