Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch is engaged to Elena Zhukova, more than 20 years his junior, marking the mogul’s sixth fiancée.
If they make it down the aisle, she will become his fifth wife this summer. The 92-year-old ex-chairman of Fox News and News Corp is set to say “I do” in June to the 67-year-old former molecular biologist, The New York Times reports.
The billionaire and Zhukova, originally from Moscow, began dating last summer after reportedly meeting through his third wife, Wendi Deng. Murdoch filed for divorce from Deng in 2013, after 14 years of marriage and two daughters together.
Murdoch and Zhukova started dating shortly after he called off his two-week engagement to Ann Lesley Smith last year.
The engagement news comes just months after Murdoch announced in September that he would step down from his role as Fox News and News Corp chair, with eldest son Lachlan replacing him at both companies.
This isn’t the first billionaire to whom Zhukova has been engaged, who was previously married to energy investor Alexander Zhukov. They share a daughter, Dasha Zhukova, 42, who was formerly married to Russian oligarch and billionaire Roman Abramovich.
Murdoch’s first trip to the altar was in 1956 when he wed fellow Australian Patricia Brooker. Murdoch and the flight attendant, who also worked as a part-time department store model, welcomed daughter Prudence two years later before divorcing in 1967.
Later that year, he moved on with Scottish native Anna Maria Torv, to whom he was married for 32 years. Through Torv, Murdoch fathered Elisabeth, 55; Lachlan, 52; and James, 51.
Murdoch was 68 when he and then-30-year-old Deng, who is Chinese, secretly exchanged vows aboard his yacht in New York Harbour in 1999.
Following their 2013 divorce, Murdoch married Jerry Hall in 2016. Hall, 67, was with Mick Jagger for over two decades — nine years of which were spent unofficially married.
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