Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch is engaged for the fifth time after a whirlwind romance.
The 92-year-old proposed to Ann Lesley Smith, 66, on St. Patrick's Day just six months after meeting his new love at his Bel Air vineyard. Murdoch, who was married to supermodel Jerry Hall until August 2022, popped the question in New York City.
Smith worked as a police chaplain in San Francisco and was previously married to country singer and businessman Chester Smith.
"I was very nervous. I dreaded falling in love—but I knew this would be my last. It better be. I'm happy," Murdoch told the New York Post. "We're both looking forward to spending the second half of our lives together."
He admitted to deciding to call Smith two weeks after they first met and had "talked for a bit" at the vineyard. The chairman of the Fox Corporation chose Ireland's national day to propose to Smith, because "I'm one-fourth Irish."
The couple plans to marry this summer.
Smith said that meeting Murdoch and falling in love was a "gift from God."
"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," she told the New York Post. "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 was married to her second husband, Chester Smith, until his death of heart failure in 2008. The couple recorded an album together in 2005 called Captured by Love and she continued his broadcasting work by hosting her own radio show on Power Talk 1360.
"When Chester was dying, he said, 'Honey, you're now me.' And it took some time to figure that out," Smith told California newspaper The Modesto Bee. "I'm a person who can make things happen for other people."
Smith was also previously married to a successful businessman who she has only identified as John and described how their lavish lives hid his alleged domestic violence.
"At times it was wonderful. It's the kind of marriage anybody would have loved to have had," she told the Christian Broadcasting Network. "During the day he would shower gifts on me and praise. When John started drinking, he became a different person. He would lock me out of the house. He physically abused me, mentally abused me, emotionally...which is actually worse than physical because you start to believe the lies."
Murdoch has been married four times before and is the father of six children.
His first wife was Australian flight attendant Patricia Booker whom he married in 1956. The two shared a daughter, Prudence.
They divorced in 1967 and in the same year, Murdoch married Scottish journalist Anna Torv (the actress of the same name's aunt), who worked as a cadet journalist at his newspaper, The Daily Mirror in Sydney, Australia.
That union bore three children—Elisabeth, Lachlan and James—who were often touted as the likely successors to their father's vast media empire.
Murdoch and Torv divorced in 1999. Just 17 days later, he married the Chinese-born Wendi Deng. They share daughters Grace and Chloe, born in 2001 and 2003, respectively.
They remained married until 2013 when Murdoch filed for divorce.
He announced his engagement to Jerry Hall in January 2016 and they married in London with all their children present. Hall was previously in a long-term relationship with Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger and shares four kids with the rocker.
Update 03/20/23, 9:07 a.m. ET: This article was updated with further information.
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