Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch got engaged to his girlfriend Elena Zhukova and is set to marry her for the fifth time on June 1 in a ceremony at his California vineyard and estate, Moraga, a source confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.
The personal life events of the 92-year business tycoon have appeared many times in the tabloid newspaper industry, mainly because of his multiple marriages and divorces.
Murdoch began dating Zhukova after meeting her via his third wife, Wendi Deng. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Murdoch’s fiancée is a retired molecular biologist who studied diabetes at the University of California, Los Angeles. Earlier, she was married to billionaire energy investor Alexander Zhukov.
Zhukova’s daughter, Dasha Zhukova, an arts patron had previously married to the Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich, AFP reported referring to The Times.
Before getting engaged with Zhukova, Murdoch was in a relationship with Ann Lesley Smith, a retired dental hygienist. He announced his relationship with Smith in the spring of 2023. But the relationship couldn’t last long and Murdoch broke up a few weeks later. Rupert Murdoch ended his fourth marriage with model Jerry Hall in 2022 after marrying her in 2016.
Rupert Murdoch married for the first time in 1956, Patricia Booker. The marriage didn’t work and the couple parted their ways eleven years later in 1967. They have one child. In the same year, Murdoch married his second wife, Anna Maria Torv. The two had three children. After more than three decades of marriage, he got divorced in 1999. Coincidently, he married in the same year with Deng but divorced in 2013. They also have two children together.
Elena Zhukov moved to the United States from Moscow and was previously married to billionaire energy investor Alexander Zhukov. A year ago, Murdoch announced to step down as the chairman of his empire, Fox Corp. and News Corp. He was succeeded by his son Lachlan Murdoch.
“For my entire professional life, I have been engaged daily with news and ideas, and that will not change,” he wrote in a letter to employees in September.
Murdoch’s large media empire consists of The Wall Street Journal, Fox News and other outlets worth more than $20 billion, according to Forbes.
