Monday, December 23, 2024

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch marries for fifth time aged 93

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Mr Murdoch married retired Russian molecular biologist Elena Zhukova, 67, on Saturday, after reports of the couple’s engagement first emerged in March.

In wedding photographs released to the media, Mr Murdoch, wearing a black suit with a yellow patterned tie, is smiling next to his new wife.

The Australian-born media magnate, who stood down as chairman of Fox and News Corp last year, had been married four times before.

His engagement to former police chaplain Ann Lesley Smith was called off just two weeks after being announced in April 2023.

Rupert Murdoch and his new wife Elena Zhukova (News Corp/PA)

Mr Murdoch married his first wife, former flight attendant Patricia Booker, in 1956, and they had one daughter, Prudence.

After their divorce 11 years later, his second marriage to Anna Torv, a trainee journalist he met while she was working on one of his Australian titles, lasted more than 30 years.

At various times, each of their three adult children, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James, appeared to be in line to inherit his media empire.

Mr Murdoch had two more children, daughters Grace and Chloe, by his third wife, Wendi Deng, whom he married in 1999, three weeks after he divorced Anna Torv.

In 2016, Mr Murdoch surprised the world by marrying former model Jerry Hall, an ex-partner of Rolling Stones’ singer Mick Jagger. The marriage lasted six years before they divorced.

Mr Murdoch’s media empire, which started in Australia in the 1950s, included buying the News Of The World and The Sun in 1969, the New York Post, Wall Street Journal and TV channel Fox News, which was launched in 1996.

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