Media mogul Rupert Murdoch marries for fifth time

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch at the age of 93, has married Elena Zhukova, a 63 year old retired marine biologist. This is the fifth time Murdoch has tied the knot.

As per reports, the wedding ceremony took place on June 1 at Murdoch’s vineyard in California.

Daily Mail reported that Zhukova and Murdoch met through the latter’s third wife, Wendi Deng and had been seeing each other for a year.

Murdoch first got married in 1956 to Patricia Booker. However, the marriage ended eleven years later in 1967. Murdoch has one child from this marriage. He then married Anna Maria Torv in the same year. That marriage bore three children and ended in 1999. Murdoch then married Deng in 1999 and got divorced in 2013. He has two children from his third marriage. In 2016, Murdoch married actress and model Jerry Hall. They got divorced in 2022.

In 2023, Murdoch was engaged to San Francisco’s former police chaplain Ann Lesley Smith. However, the engagement was broken off after a brief period. Vanity Fair reported that it was Smith’s public evangelical views that Murdoch grew uncomfortable with.

Murdoch retired from his role as chairman of the board at both Fox Corp. and News Corp. last year. Murdoch has now assumed the honorary title of chairman emeritus for both companies. His son, Lachlan Murdoch, stepped into the role of sole chairman at News Corp. while retaining his position as the executive chair and CEO of Fox Corp.

Rupert Murdoch stepped down from his board positions in the wake of a turbulent year at Fox's TV network, notably after the company agreed to a hefty $787.5 million settlement in the Dominion Voting Systems' defamation lawsuit. This lawsuit stemmed from false claims that Fox's machines influenced the 2020 election.