Rupert Murdoch says the fifth yes: the wedding with Abramovich’s ex-mother-in-law, 25 years younger

Rupert Murdoch says his fifth fateful yes. The 93-year-old tycoon gets married to Elena Zhukova, the former mother-in-law of the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. The wedding was celebrated in Moraga, Murdoch’s California mansion, in the presence of excellent guests, including the owner of the New England Patriot Robert Kartf and his wife Dana Blumberg and the CEO of New Corp Robert Thompson with his wife Wang Ping. To welcome the guests and their luxurious cars, including many Rolls Royces and Bentleys, there were impressive security measures adopted to maintain confidentiality and keep the wedding away from the paparazzi.

The official photos released show the two spouses smiling and embracing. The new wife wearing an elegant off-the-shoulder white dress and Murdoch flawless in a dark suit. The couple began dating last summer after the tycoon’s previous engagement to police chaplain Ann Lesley Smith fell apart after just two weeks. Murdoch had said that his marriage to Lesley Smith would be his last, however they never took place and, shortly after the breakup, the tycoon met Zhukova, a scientist 25 years younger who arrived in the United States with her ex-husband while the era of the Soviet Union was closing.

Murdoch and Zhukova met at an event organized by his third wife, Wendi Deng, a close friend of her daughter, Dasha Zhukova, a Russian model known for her marriage to oligarch and former Chelsea team owner Roman Abramovich. The new marriage will probably have no impact on the structure of his companies, controlled by a family trust whose shares belong to the tycoon and his four eldest children (he has six in total). The marriage, however, reignites attention on Murdoch’s private life, which has been at the center of gossip for years and a source of inspiration for the award-winning TV series ‘Succession’. Before Zhukova, Murdoch was in fact married to Patricia Booker, Anna Murdoch Mann, Wendi Deng and Jerry Hall, Mick Jagger’s ex-wife dumped in June 2022 with an email.