Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, 92, is engaged again
- Rupert Murdoch plans to wed 67-year-old Elena Zhukova in California in June
- He has been married four times before – his last to Jerry Hall ended in 2022
Rupert Murdoch, 92, got engaged to his girlfriend, Elena Zhukova, a spokesman said on Thursday, which would mark his fifth trip down the aisle.
The wedding will be held in California, at Murdoch’s vineyard and estate, Moraga, a spokesman said.
The impending nuptials come just months after Murdoch stepped down as chairman of Fox and News Corp, ending a more than seven-decade career at the helm of a sprawling media empire.
The New York Times, which first reported the news, said Zhukova, who is from Moscow, is 67. She is a retired molecular biologist whom Murdoch began dating in the summer, it added.
They met through Murdoch’s third wife, Wendi Deng, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
Elena Zhukova’s daughter, Dasha Zhukova, an arts patron and entrepreneur, was formerly married to the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, The Times said.
Murdoch’s roller-coaster personal life is often fodder for the tabloid newspaper industry that he helped create on three continents.
Murdoch, who has six children, was first married to Patricia Booker, an Australian flight attendant, whom he divorced in the late 1960s.
He and his second wife, Anna Torv, a newspaper reporter, were together more than 30 years before divorcing in 1999. His third marriage to Deng ended in 2013.
Moraga, where Murdoch is due to get married, is the same place where Murdoch and Walt Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger first discussed Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox, a US$71 billion deal that closed in 2019.
Murdoch handed over control of his global media empire to son Lachlan last November, shifting to an emeritus status.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
