Billionaire Rupert Murdoch marries fifth wife at age 93
At 93, media mogul Rupert Murdoch has taken his fifth bride, Elena Zhukova, also known as the former mother-in-law of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
Rupert Murdoch, chairman of Fox News Channel. Photo by Reuters
Murdoch and Zhukova, 67, were wedded Saturday at the media mogul’s California vineyard and estate, called Moraga.
Photographs published in The Sun, the British tabloid owned by Murdoch, show the couple posing and smiling at their Saturday wedding — he in a black suit and yellow tie and she in an off-the-shoulder white gown as she clutched a bouquet of lilies of the valley.
Jet-set guests at the nuptials included Robert Kraft, 82, the owner of the New England Patriots US football team, and his 50-year-old wife Dana Blumberg, news reports said.
Murdoch had previously been married four times, most recently to model Jerry Hall, the longtime partner of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger.
His roller-coaster personal life is often fodder for the tabloid newspaper industry that he helped foster on three continents.
Last year, Murdoch announced his engagement to dental hygienist-turned-conservative radio host Ann Lesley Smith, but called off the planned nuptials less than a month later.
Zhukova, who emigrated to the U.S. from Russia, is a retired molecular biologist.
Her daughter, Dasha Zhukova, an arts patron and entrepreneur, was formerly married to the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
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 Wendi Deng ended in 2013.
The Australia-born Murdoch, whose media empire includes The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and other influential outlets, and his family have a network of about $20 billion, according to Forbes.
Murdoch handed over control of his global media empire to son Lachlan last November, shifting to an emeritus status.