Rupert Murdoch, 92, decides to have another go at marriage
Rupert Murdoch, four times married and divorced at 92, isn’t letting age or previous marital experience stand in the way of a fresh start. The billionaire media baron said he plans to marry a fifth time.
Murdoch announced he is engaged once again, this time to Ann Lesley Smith, 66, a former model, singersongwriter, radio talkshow host, and police chaplain in San Francisco. The couple met last year.
Murdoch is fresh off his divorce from Jerry Hall, the model and actress he married in 2016. Murdoch divorced Hall, the mother of four of Mick Jagger’s children, last year.
Murdoch broke the news in the New York Post, the tabloid that helped launch his foray into the American and global media market when the Australian immigrant bought it in 1976. Murdoch-led companies have since founded or acquired the Fox broadcast network, Fox News Channel, the
Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins book publishers, among dozens of other properties.
“I was very nervous,” Murdoch told Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams of his budding relationship with Smith. “I dreaded falling in love — but I knew this would be my last. It better be. I’m happy.”
Smith, twice married, is the widow of Chester Smith, a former country singer and broadcaster who was instrumental in the founding of Univision, the Spanishlanguage TV network.
She told Adams, “I’m a widow 14 years. Like Rupert, my husband was a businessman. Worked for local papers, developed radio and TV stations and helped promote Univision. So I speak Rupert’s language. We share the same beliefs.”
The couple met in September at a reception at Murdoch’s house and winery in Bel Air, California.
Murdoch’s previous marriages have produced six children, including four adult children — Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James — who have had roles in operating his companies. He has two daughters, Grace and Chloe, from his marriage to his third wife, Wendi Deng, whom he divorced in 2013 after 14 years of marriage.
Murdoch’s Fox Corp. is facing a $1.6 billion lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, a Denver company that alleges Fox News’s hosts and guests repeatedly defamed it by falsely tying it to efforts to cheat President Donald Trump out of an election victory in 2020.
Murdoch acknowledged in a deposition that he had the power to stop the false narrative but declined to step in.