David Copperfield’s private Bahamian retreat, Musha Cay and the surrounding Islands of Copperfield Bay, has been of public interest for over nearly two decades. The island’s reputation as a playground for extreme wealth predates most named guests; Copperfield acquired and developed the archipelago in the early 2000s, completing the core infrastructure by the mid-2000s. From the outset, Musha Cay was designed not as a resort in the conventional sense but as a controlled environment: one party at a time, total exclusivity, and a premium placed on discretion.
The first clearly dated, publicly confirmed event on the island occurred in May 2007, when Google co-founder Sergey Brin married Anne Wojcicki there. That wedding established Musha Cay as a viable venue for global elites seeking isolation without austerity. The event drew press attention not because of spectacle—few images were released—but because it demonstrated the island’s ability to host figures at the apex of technological and financial power while remaining largely invisible. From that point forward, Musha Cay entered a different category of private spaces: not merely luxurious, but strategically private.
Throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s, the island began appearing intermittently in lifestyle journalism, usually through indirect references rather than firsthand accounts. Media figures such as Oprah Winfrey and technology magnates like Bill Gates were cited as guests, typically without dates, photographs, or contextual detail. These mentions tended to appear in profiles of Copperfield himself or in features on celebrity-owned properties, reinforcing the sense that Musha Cay functioned as a node in overlapping elite networks rather than as a destination with a public calendar.
Actors and entertainers also appear in the island’s reported history during this period. Johnny Depp, Jim Carrey, and John Travolta are all named in various travel and entertainment outlets as having visited Musha Cay, again without corroborating timelines. The absence of precise dates is not incidental; it reflects how the island is marketed and managed. Its value proposition rests on the erasure of traceable presence, allowing guests to occupy the space without leaving a clear public footprint.
Wedding-related reporting adds another layer to the timeline. In the early 2010s, Bahamian and international press outlets reported that Penélope Cruz and Javier Bardem held wedding celebrations at Musha Cay, though accounts vary as to whether the ceremony itself occurred there or whether the island hosted ancillary events. The ambiguity is instructive. Even when events are newsworthy, details remain blurred, suggesting a deliberate boundary between what is permitted to circulate publicly and what remains sealed.
Around the same time, reports emerged of visits by figures such as Tyler Perry and Mel Gibson. In Gibson’s case, the visit was framed less as leisure and more as reconnaissance; he was said to have examined the island’s infrastructure while contemplating the purchase of a private island of his own. This points to another function of Musha Cay during the 2010s: a proving ground where ultra-wealthy individuals could observe, compare, and replicate models of total privacy.
By the mid-to-late 2010s, Musha Cay had become a fixture in high-end travel narratives, often described as one of the most exclusive rental properties in the world. These articles routinely referenced unnamed billionaires, international industrialists, and foreign tycoons, sometimes specifying regions—Russia, China, the Middle East—without naming individuals. The island’s timeline in this phase is less about identifiable events and more about continuity: steady use by a transnational elite whose defining characteristic is the ability to remain unnamed.
In the 2020s, that pattern appears to have persisted. There have been no major, publicly documented events on Musha Cay comparable to the Brin wedding, but neither has there been any indication of diminished use. If anything, the island’s operating model—exclusive booking, total buyout, minimal public exposure—has aged well in an era increasingly defined by surveillance, leaks, and reputational risk. The lack of new names is itself data, suggesting that Musha Cay’s primary success lies in preventing its guest list from becoming news.
Taken together, the timeline and guest history of Musha Cay reveal less about individual personalities than about a class of spaces engineered for invisibility. The island’s documented moments—most notably in 2007—serve as anchors, while the surrounding years dissolve into carefully managed ambiguity. What emerges is not a comprehensive ledger of who was there and when, but a portrait of how privacy itself is curated, sold, and sustained at the highest levels of global wealth.