News broke on Thursday that media titan Rupert Murdoch, aged 92, is once again preparing to walk down the aisle. This will be his sixth matrimony, this time to former scientist, Elena Zhukova, who is 67 years old. The New York Times details the announcement made by Mr. Murdoch’s office.
After a two-week engagement to Ann Lesley Smith, a 67-year-old conservative radio host, did not culminate in nuptials, rumours surfaced last April that Mr. Murdoch was seeing Ms Zhukova. The couple will exchange vows in Moraga, at Rupert Murdoch’s Californian vineyard and homestead, according to details provided by an associate of Mr. Murdoch, supplying details to the Times.
Zhukova, a retired molecular biologist, was first introduced to the media maven at an extensive family event organised by Wendi Deng, the third Mrs. Murdoch. Their marriage lasted 14 years before terminating in a divorce in 2013. Her daughter, Dasha Zhukova, once married to Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, is a Russian-American philanthropist and a significant player in the art world. Roman Abramovich used to own Chelsea, a notable Premier League football club.
Murdoch’s latest romantic foray come a mere five months after he stepped down from the vast media empire he founded, taking his first steps under the aegis of his father, the former proprietor of a newspaper. Headquartered in New York, News Corp, the globally recognised and publicly listed company amassed by Murdoch, owns an array of digital media outlets at local, national and international levels. These include the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, Sky News Australia, and the prominent publishing house, HarperCollins.
According to Bloomberg, Murdoch’s net worth stands at an impressive $8.96 billion (€8.19 billion). His soon-to-be spouse previously focused on molecular diabetes research at the University of California, Los Angeles, as per the New York Times. Zhukova, originally from Russia and of noted intellectual lineage (“usual, normal Moscow intelligentsia”), was formerly married to Russian-born British billionaire investor Alexander Zhukov.
Rupert Murdoch parted ways with Jerry Hall, his most recent wife and a former supermodel, in 2022. Previous spouses include Wendi Deng, Anna Murdoch Mann and Patricia Booker. From these relationships he has fathered six children.
The upcoming nuptials scheduled for this summer follow a year of adversity for the Murdoch dynasty in 2023, embodied by a substantial $787.5 million settlement involving Fox News and the vote machinery business, Dominion. This arrangement effectively concluded a disagreement regarding the extent of knowledge the broadcasting outlet and its parent company had when they aired dubious and extravagant claims suggesting that Dominion had a role in manipulating the 2020 US election results. – Guardian