He thought she was the perfect Super Girl. She knew she would marry him the first time they met. For Lululemon founder Chip Wilson and Shannon Gray, the initial attraction was electric.

Now, it's splitsville. After nearly 25 years of marriage, the couple are divorcing-and there is no prenuptial agreement, according to a person familiar with the situation. That could put at risk Wilson's fortune, estimated at roughly $6 billion, as well as the leverage he has over the athleisure company he founded.

His holdings include sizable chunks of Lululemon, Amer Sports and a real-estate company. Without a prenuptial, assets are generally divided 50-50, according to divorce lawyers in Canada, where the couple lives. The spouses can retain assets they owned at the outset, but any appreciation in those assets over the course of the marriage are typically divided equally.

The breakup throws into question just how much pressure Wilson will be able to apply on Lululemon going forward. He stepped down as chief executive in 2005 and left the board in 2015. But he is the company's largest individual investor with a roughly 8.6% stake valued at roughly $930 million, and he has been publicly pummeling the company from the sidelines as its sales and stock have nosedived.

Wilson, 71 years old, has never been one to hold his tongue and sometimes his outspokenness has backfired. In 2013, he blamed a problem with see-through pants on customers' bodies. He required employees to attend self-help seminars and show their athletic prowess by completing grueling hikes. The unconventional management style rubbed some employees the wrong way. But it also created a unique and tightknit culture.

A chunk of his wealth comes from his 17% stake in Amer Sports, the parent company of Arc'teryx, Salomon and Wilson, worth about $2.8 billion. He also co-founded Low Tide Properties, a commercial and residential real-estate company.

It's unclear how much, if any, of his Lululemon stake he would have to sell.

In high-net worth divorces, parties typically divide assets in the most tax-efficient way possible. In Wilson's case, that could theoretically involve giving up other assets to avoid selling Lululemon shares and incurring capital-gains taxes, lawyers said. The particulars of Wilson's divorce, filed with the Supreme Court of British Columbia, are sealed to the public.

Wilson isn't the only wealthy entrepreneur to divorce without a prenup. Jeff Bezos didn't have one when he split from his first wife, MacKenzie Scott. Wilson wasn't uber wealthy when he married Shannon. Although he sold a previous company for about $15 million, he took home only about $800,000 after taxes and loans were paid off. During Lululemon's early days, he put his house up for collateral to secure a loan.

However the split happens, it's yet another twist in the Wilson saga.

Dennis "Chip" Wilson was born in California and grew up in Calgary playing football and swimming competitively. His dad was a physical-education teacher. His stay-at-home mom loved to sew. From her, he learned about patterns, fabric and clothing design.

At age 32, he was diagnosed with a rare type of muscular dystrophy and has since pledged $100 million of his own money to find a cure.

He founded his first company, Westbeach Snowboard, in 1979, to sell surf, skate and snowboard gear. He sold Westbeach in 1997. A year later, he started Lululemon after taking a yoga class. He chose the name for its alliterative "l's."

One of his first hires was Shannon "Summer" Gray, who would become the company's lead designer.

"Here I was, a 41-year-old divorced male with two children," Wilson wrote in his memoir. "In walks Summer. The perfect Super Girl. She was twenty-four, highly educated, a top athlete, and passionate about goals, athletics, and apparel design. Frankly, I was taken aback. I thought to myself, "she is going to make some man a very lucky husband someday, too bad it won't be me." Super Girl is a reference to Wilson's ideal Lululemon customer.

Gray had a slightly different first impression of Wilson.

"He was late for our meeting," she said, according to the book. "I saw him peel into the parking lot, no shirt, no shoes. I then watched him rummage around in his car for something clean to put on. That was my introduction to Chip, him frantically picking up shirts, sniffing this one, sniffing that one, trying to find a matching pair of shoes...When my mom asked me how the interview had gone, I told her I wasn't sure I'd get the job, but I did think I would marry him."

They worked together for almost two years before they became a couple.

During a 2001 business trip to the Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt Lake City, the pair chatted on the plane ride, caught a free outdoor concert and went for a swim. Because Lululemon was running on a shoestring budget, Wilson rented one hotel room for them to share, with separate beds. He said in his book that was standard procedure for the fledgling company. "We saw it as camping," he wrote.

Back at the hotel, they stretched out on their respective beds. Then, Gray went to Wilson's bed. She put her head on his chest and closed her eyes. They fell asleep like that.

"In the morning, we woke up to a new reality," Wilson wrote. "We hadn't even kissed the night before, but everything had changed."

The couple married in 2002 and went on to have three children.

Wilson built Lululemon into a retailing juggernaut and helped create the athleisure category-a term he has said he hates. He fashioned an insular and unusual corporate culture.

Wilson pushed employees to complete the Grouse Grind, a 1.8-mile trek up Grouse Mountain near the company's Vancouver headquarters. And he urged employees to attend self-help sessions at a leadership-development company called the Landmark Forum.

After Wilson stepped down as CEO, Lululemon cycled through a series of professional managers. But the founder couldn't stop meddling.

In 2011, Wilson had the saying "Who is John Galt?" printed on Lululemon tote bags. Customers complained the line from the Ayn Rand book "Atlas Shrugged," which promotes self-interest, was contradictory to the inclusive teachings of yoga. Then-CEO Christine Day replaced the bags with Christmas-themed totes. In his book, Wilson said Day initially loved the idea of the "Atlas Shrugged" quote. But later in a board meeting, she denied knowing anything about it.

"Writing a line from the book inside a bag came up in a marketing meeting and we all laughed," Day said in a recent interview. "That was the end of the discussion. Chip then took the idea and blew it up on the bag and launched it without me knowing anything about it. He loved controversy and shocking people."

He clashed with Day again in 2013, after Lululemon declined to use a washable cashmere designed by Shannon Wilson. In an October 2013 letter, Day informed Shannon Wilson that moving forward with the fabric could lead to a conflict with Lululemon and that her work with the company would be terminated.

Shannon Wilson went on to found Kit & Ace and her husband served as an adviser to the business that sold sporty casual wear made from the fabric.

Lululemon's board formed a committee that included every director except Wilson to oversee competitive issues. The move left Chip Wilson with no real role on the board, and he stepped down in February 2015.

Kit & Ace eventually closed all its U.S. stores and was acquired by a Canadian retailer in 2023.

Wilson has spent the past decade or so criticizing Lululemon. In October, he took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal where he likened its missteps to a plane crash and blamed the "loss of cool" on the kind of CEO who can "speak Wall Street" but is killing innovation. By December, the company announced that CEO Calvin McDonald was stepping down.

That same month, Wilson launched a proxy fight seeking to overhaul the company's board. But in a settlement announced in May in which Wilson got to appoint two new directors among other measures, he agreed to an 18-month nondisparagement agreement.

Since then, Lululemon's North American sales have continued to fall and its shares are down more than 50% this year. That is creating challenges for its new CEO, former Nike executive Heidi O'Neill, who started her job this past week.

Unless business picks up soon, it's hard to see Wilson staying quiet for long.