COUPLESMedia Mogul Rupert Murdoch Announces Engagement To Ann Lesley Smith After Split From Fourth Wife Jerry Hall: 'I'm Happy'
March 20 2023, Published 9:19 a.m. ET
Rupert Murdoch is going to be walking down the aisle again.
The 92-year-old announced his engagement to Ann Lesley Smith, who is 26 years his junior, in a new interview.
“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, adding that he proposed on St. Patrick's Day last week as he's "one-fourth Irish."
Smith's ring is "diamond solitaire, which the almost groom personally selected," the outlet reported.
Former San Fran police chaplain Smith, whose late husband was country singer and radio and TV executive Chester Smith, gushed of their relationship.
“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.”
The two met at Murdoch's vineyard in Bel Air, Calif.
“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 recalled.
“We’re both looking forward to spending the second half of our lives together," he added, revealing the wedding is late summer.
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As Radar previously reported, Murdoch met Smith in September 2022 — just a few months after the billionaire called it quits with Jerry Hall.
The New York Times revealed the split, insisting that none of Murdoch's businesses he holds stakes in, such as Fox News and The Wall Street Journal, would be affected.
“The Murdoch family’s shares in the companies Mr. Murdoch founded reside in a strictly managed trust. Mr. Murdoch splits voting rights over that trust with his four oldest children — Lachlan, Elisabeth, James, and Prudence — and has arranged them so that he can never be outvoted," the article read.
It's not a surprise Murdoch is moving so fast, as a source close to him told Radar to “expect an announcement soon.”
Murdoch spoke with the New York Post.
