For the fifth time he agreed to the formula “until death do you part”: a challenge, however the king of the media Rupert Murdoch, who at 93 years old, grandfather of 13 grandchildren, has already been divorced four times. Saturday He married Elena Zhukova, 67 years old, former molecular biologist and emigrated from Russia in 1991; she is used to dealing with the richest men in the world because her daughter Dasha, born in 1981, was the wife of the king of the oligarchs Roman Abramovicand is now Mrs. Niarchos (having married Stavros, Paris Hilton’s ex and a shipowner).
Zhukova became the fifth Mrs Murdoch in a white mermaid dress and with a bouquet of lilies of the valley in her hand; the ceremony was performed in the family’s Mar-a-Lagothe estate with vineyards of Moraga, California. After years of tensions over succession, Elena Zhukova’s entry into the Murdoch family will not change the ownership of Fox and News Corpthe two publishing giants of which Rupert left the helm last autumn, remaining however “president emeritus”. 40% of both are controlled by a family trustwhich includes Rupert’s six children.
Zhukova and Murdoch they started dating last summer, it seems at a family party hosted by his third ex-wife Wendi Dench: he had recently broken off his engagement with Ann Lesley Smith, a former hygienist who had distanced him, so a friend Vanity Fair, for his extreme evangelistic faith. She was a chaplain in prison. She remained in office, as a girlfriend, for two weeks.
But Zhukova’s mandate is also limited: Rupert Murdoch’s four ex-wives, different in profession, age and appearance, have only one thing in common, and that is that at a certain point he left them and never vice versa. After eleven years and a daughter, Prudence, the former hostess Patricia Booker: an interview she had done with him was a prison sentence, precisely for her Daily Mirror, reporter Anna Torv. Having abandoned Patricia, he remained with her for 32 years, becoming the father of Lachlan, James and Elisabeth. Then, in 1999, when he fell in love with an intern at his TV channel acquired in Hong Kong, Star TV, he left Anna with the legendary severance pay of 1.7 billion dollars.
From Wendi Dench, a former poor child growing up in rural China without hot water, he had two daughters; and perhaps the only disappointment in love that is known of her, having discovered emails that left little doubt about her relationship with the godfather of their firstborn, Tony Blair. Who was also the only non-conservative politician that his newspapers ever supported.
Then the wedding with Jerry Hall, announced on Twitter by calling himself “the luckiest man in the world”. It was 2016. Six years and a pandemic later, she would have left her via email: her children had not appreciated the excessive “security measures” with which Mick Jagger’s ex-wife shielded Murdoch from visits, even family ones, on the pretext of Covid. Now it’s Zhukova’s turn: honeymoon — after spending last summer between Capri and Corfu — it will be in Australiain the lands where the elderly husband grew up.
