Rupert Murdoch, an Australian-American media billionaire, gets engaged again less than a year after divorcing model-actress Jerry Hall. According to a Variety article, Rupert Murdoch just got engaged to 66-year-old San Francisco police chaplain Ann Lesley Smith.
Variety quotes Cindy Adams, a gossip journalist who first broke the news in the “New York Post,” as saying that Rupert Murdoch’s prospective bride was previously wed to Chester Smith, a country-western musician and former radio and television executive who passed away in 2008.
According to Adams, the two became close because of their mutual expertise of the media industry and the fact that Murdoch still owns a vineyard while she formerly had one.
Variety reports that if they get married, it will be Murdoch’s sixth marriage. Model and actress Jerry Hall and Murdoch were wed for six years. Murdoch was previously wed to Wendi Deng from 1999 to 2013; Anna Maria Torv from 1967 to 1999; and Patricia Booker from 1956 to 1967. He was also previously married to Hall.
Murdoch is the chairman of Fox Corporation, a publicly listed company that owns Fox Sports, Fox Business, Fox News, and Fox Broadcasting. He is the CEO of News Corporation, which also owns the Wall Street Journal, The Sun, and Harper Collins. He also owns the New York Post.
The announcement of his marriage comes as Fox is being sued for defamation for $1.6 billion by “Dominion Voting” against Murdoch. The technology business says that Fox News commentators intentionally misrepresented Dominion’s role in the 2020 election, suggesting that it manipulated the campaign in Joe Biden’s favor.
