NEWSRupert Murdoch & Ann Lesley Smith Abruptly Call Off Engagement After Media Mogul Becomes Uncomfortable With Her Outspoken Views: Source
April 4 2023, Published 1:51 p.m. ET
Though Rupert Murdoch and Ann Lesley Smith announced their engagement a few weeks ago, the couple have now called it quits.
According to Vanity Fair, the media mogul, 92, got uncomfortable with Smith's outspoken evangelical views.
As OK! previously reported, Murdoch was set to wed Smith over the summer.
“I was very nervous. I dreaded falling in love — but I knew this would be my last. It better be. I’m happy," he said of getting down on one knee, adding that he proposed on St. Patrick's Day since he's "one-fourth Irish."
Smith's ring is "diamond solitaire, which the almost groom personally selected," he told the New York Post.
Smith also shared their romance began after they met at Murdoch's vineyard in Bel Air, Calif. “For us both it’s a gift from God. We met last September," she noted. “I’m a widow 14 years. Like Rupert, my husband was a businessman. Worked for local papers, developed radio and TV stations and helped promote Univision. So I speak Rupert’s language. We share the same beliefs. In perspective, it’s not my first rodeo. Getting near 70 means being in the last half. I waited for the right time. Friends are happy for me.”
“She and her husband also owned a vineyard and had been in the wine business. Last year when there was 200 people at my vineyard, I met her and we talked a bit. Two weeks later I called her," he added. “We’re both looking forward to spending the second half of our lives together."
However, as people dug up Smith's past, Murdoch learned more and more about his lady.
Smith was previously married to John B. Huntington, whose family came from money. “I spent $65,000 a month on clothes easily. Money was not an object. I had everything in the world,” she told the Christian Broadcasting Network.
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Huntington became an abusive alcoholic, while she was suicidal. However, she had a moment of clarity when she found Jesus in a coffee shop and became a street preacher in California. “When you let the Lord take control of your life, you can make it. Out of the ruins you can rise and let the oil of his anointing just be all over you,” she told CBN.
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She later married Chester Smith, but she became embroiled in a court battle with her stepdaughters over his fortune after he passed in 2008.
According to court documents, one of the stepdaughters accused Ann Lesley of “financial elder abuse.” Ann Lesley said she didn't do anything wrong, and the case was later settled.
