LOS ANGELES: Media magnate Rupert Murdoch has married for the fifth time at age 93, tying the knot with a retired molecular biologist a quarter century younger than him.

Murdoch and Elena Zhukova, 67, were wedded on Saturday at the media mogul’s California vineyard and estate, called Moraga.

Photographs published in The Sun, the British tabloid owned by Murdoch, show the couple posing and smiling — he in a black suit and yellow tie and she in an off-the-shoulder white gown as she clutched a bouquet of lilies of the valley.

Jet-set guests at the nuptials included Robert Kraft, 82, the owner of the New England Patriots US football team, and his 50-year-old wife Dana Blumberg, news reports said.

Murdoch had previously been married four times, most recently to model Jerry Hall, the longtime partner of Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger. His roller-coaster personal life is often fodder for the tabloid newspaper industry that he helped foster on three continents.

Last year, Murdoch announced his engagement to dental hygienist-turned-conservative radio host Ann Lesley Smith, but called off the planned nuptials less than a month later. Zhukova, who emigrated to the United States from Russia, is a retired molecular biologist.

Her daughter, Dasha Zhukova, an arts patron and entrepreneur, was formerly married to the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. Murdoch, who has six children, was first married to Patricia Booker, an Australian flight attendant, whom he divorced in the late 1960s.

He and his second wife, Anna Torv, a newspaper reporter, were together more than 30 years before divorcing in 1999. His third marriage to Wendi Deng ended in 2013.

Published in Dawn, June 3rd, 2024