Gordon Getty

Getty was raised in San Francisco, California, where he attended St. Ignatius College Preparatory and the University of San Francisco. He also earned a B.A. in music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He studied singing with Verna Osborne.

Getty joined the oil business to please his father; however, he eventually sold the family's Getty Oil to Texaco in 1986 for about $10 billion.

In 2002, Getty founded ReFlow, a company which temporarily purchases shares in mutual funds to save funds taxes and commissions.

Classical music

Among several professions, Getty is a classical music composer whose compositions include the opera Plump Jack, Joan and the Bells, piano pieces, and a collection of choral works. His one-act opera Usher House was performed by the San Francisco Opera in 2015. His opera The Canterville Ghost was premiered on May 9, 2015, at the Leipzig Opera.

Aspiring to become an opera singer, Getty studied in the mid-1970s with Louise Caselotti, a mezzo-soprano who had been Maria Callas' voice teacher (1946–47). He and his wife have supported the fine arts, especially underwriting productions of the San Francisco Opera and the Russian National Orchestra.

On Christmas Day, 1964, he married Ann Gilbert (1941–2020) in Las Vegas, Nevada. Gordon and Ann Getty lived in a yellow Italianate mansion in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, with sweeping views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz. Over the years, Getty and Ann, a publisher and a decorator, expanded their living space, buying the house next door (to make room for his work at the piano) and then the house next door to that. They hosted charity events, opera stars, and fundraisers for politicians, including Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom. Gavin Newsom's father, William Newsom, one of Gordon's friends since high school, managed the family trust for years.

Gordon and Ann Getty had four sons: Gordon Peter Getty Jr (born 1965); William Paul Getty (born 1970); Andrew Rork Getty (1967–2015); John Gilbert Getty (1968–2020).

Getty's assets are managed by Vallejo Investments. Vallejo Investments is what's known as a "family office," an in-house financial team of specialized attorneys, accountants, and money managers.

Getty has a second family based in Los Angeles, including three daughters, with his former longtime mistress Cynthia Beck.

His donations to University of San Francisco helped build the Koret Health & Recreation Center, John Lo Schiavo, S.J. Center for Science & Innovation, and helped establish the J. Paul Getty Honors College Fund.

In documents released in 2026, emails indicated that biologist Robert Trivers introduced Getty to Jeffrey Epstein in 2013 and that Getty and Epstein subsequently corresponded and met. In a 2018 email to Epstein, Trivers attributed to Getty a comment comparing publicity surrounding Getty’s extramarital family with Epstein’s own legal scandal. The available correspondence continued through 2019, although the extent of their direct contact is unclear.