Rupert Murdoch, who retired from the boards of Fox and Information Company final yr, walked down an outside aisle beneath blue skies to alternate vows on Saturday with Elena Zhukova, his fifth bride, at Moraga, his Tuscan-style winery property within the hills of the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles.
Ms. Zhukova, 67, carried a bouquet of white flowers and wore an ankle-length, off-the-shoulder white costume with a sq. neckline, reportedly designed by the London-based designer Emilia Wickstead; Mr. Murdoch, 93, wore a darkish swimsuit with sneakers. Notable friends caught by paparazzi on the way in which into the ceremony included Robert Ok. Kraft, the proprietor of the New England Patriots, and Robert Thomson, the chief govt of Information Corp.
The couple met by way of Mr. Murdoch’s third spouse, Wendi Deng, in line with The Day by day Mail, which first reported their relationship final summer time. Ms. Zhukova is a retired molecular biologist who immigrated to the US from Moscow in 1991, simply months earlier than the Soviet Union collapsed. She was beforehand married to Alexander Zhukov, the billionaire power investor.
There have been few public particulars concerning the couple’s courtship, with representatives for Mr. Murdoch staying mum, however The Day by day Mail reported that shortly after assembly, Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Zhukova spent weeks vacationing collectively within the Mediterranean aboard the Christina O, a yacht that after belonged to Aristotle Onassis. Their engagement was introduced in March.
Mr. Murdoch’s fifth marriage comes after a called-off engagement to Ann Lesley Smith, who’s a retired dental hygienist and a conservative radio host. Final spring, he proposed to Ms. Smith however broke off the engagement after lower than a month.
Ms. Zhukova’s marital historical past is much less nicely documented. She met her first husband, Mr. Zhukov, now a British citizen, when each have been college students within the Soviet Union. Their marriage, throughout which they’d a daughter, the entrepreneur and socialite Dasha Zhukova, lasted three years, in line with The New Yorker.
A primary stroll down the aisle for Mr. Murdoch got here in 1956, when he married Patricia Booker, a former flight attendant and mannequin. They’d a daughter, Prudence, earlier than divorcing in 1967.
That very same yr, he married his second spouse, Anna Maria Torv, then a journalist at one in every of his Australian newspapers. That union lasted 32 years, they usually had three kids: Elisabeth, Lachlan and James. All have labored for his or her father’s international empire; final yr, Lachlan Murdoch was named Mr. Murdoch’s sole successor, turning into liable for steering the media firm his father began constructing from a small native newspaper in his native Australia 70 years in the past. Mr. Murdoch maintains an emeritus function.
In 1999, when Mr. Murdoch and Ms. Torv divorced, he and his third spouse, Ms. Deng, a tv govt born in China, married. They’d two daughters, Grace and Chloe, and divorced in 2013. He met Jerry Corridor, who’s a mannequin, actress and one in every of Mick Jagger’s former wives, the identical yr. They married in 2016 and had no kids collectively earlier than divorcing in 2022.
Mr. Murdoch and his household have a internet price of almost $20 billion, in line with Forbes. His publicly traded firm Information Corp owns a portfolio of reports retailers together with The Wall Road Journal, The New York Put up, The Instances of London and Sky Information Australia, in addition to the ebook writer HarperCollins. Based on The Reduce, Ms. Deng and Ms. Corridor each signed prenuptial agreements earlier than marrying Mr. Murdoch.
Moraga, the marriage venue, is the place Mr. Murdoch first hatched his 2019 deal to promote most of Fox’s film studio, FX and Nationwide Geographic to Disney. He purchased the property in 2013 for a reported $29.5 million. Amongst its former homeowners is the director Victor Fleming, whose credit embody “The Wizard of Oz” and “Gone With the Wind.”
When he retired in September, Mr. Murdoch informed workers in a letter that for his whole skilled life he had been engaged day by day with information and concepts. “That won’t change,” he wrote. “However the time is true for me to tackle totally different roles.”
