The marrying kind: The many wives of Rupert Murdoch

Last Monday I found myself embedded deep in the heartland of the Murdoch media machine as old friends, colleagues and rivals gathered in a vast Sydney movie studio to celebrate the life of entertainment executive, showbiz impresario and esteemed raconteur Brian Walsh.

Walsh, who launched Foxtel, had worked for the Murdochs for decades. There was chatter Rupert Murdoch, 92, might bring his new fiancée, Ann Lesley Smith, 66. Anticipation was high.

Rupert Murdoch with fiancee Ann Lesley Smith in the Carribean in January.Credit: Backgrid

To my left was Murdoch’s heir apparent, eldest son Lachlan, with wife Sarah. They looked to be still very much in love after nearly a quarter of a century of marriage.

To my right were a couple of Rupert Murdoch’s most trusted lieutenants who for decades worked within his vast news machine and got to know their somewhat enigmatic proprietor better than most.

Sadly, Murdoch senior never materialised. Later I whispered in jest to one of his cronies: “I guess you boys are busy planning Rupert’s next buck’s party?”

We laughed, but there was no further comment on that particular subject coming my way, a gossip columnist from the enemy camp.

Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch at the funeral of Brian Walsh in Sydney this week.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Three days later and the buck’s party was a dead duck. Vanity Fair revealed Rupert Murdoch’s two-week engagement to Smith, a former dental hygienist turned country music singer and right-wing evangelist, was off.

Murdoch and Smith are yet to make a public comment on the matter.

Apparently Rupert, who had dropped around $3.5 million on an 11-carat Asscher-cut diamond solitaire engagement ring, couldn’t take much more of her preaching.

The late Patricia Booker, Rupert Murdoch’s first wife.

Not even Murdoch’s own New York Post could have dreamed up a better tabloid zinger, providing a convenient distraction from the far more uncomfortable news of the looming Dominion defamation case he is currently starring in.

Indeed, the many wives of Rupert Murdoch have become one of the more fascinating aspects of the businessman’s much-storied life.

Just as Elizabeth Taylor endured jibes and scrutiny for her eight marriages, Murdoch’s marital history has once again come under the public spotlight.

There have been countless opinion pieces and analysis from relationship experts published on why he would even want to get hitched yet again.

Mrs Murdoch No.2: Rupert and second wife Anna in 1989.Credit: Getty

No doubt the four previous Mrs Murdochs would be wondering too, curious as to what it will take to become the last Mrs Murdoch now the billionaire is officially back on the market.

Mrs Murdoch No.1 was the glamorous Patricia Booker, a flight attendant and department store model from Melbourne. They married in 1956 when Rupert was just 25. They had one child, daughter Prudence, now 65.

They divorced in 1967. Two years later, aged 9, Prudence persuaded her father to seek custody after her mother remarried Freddie Maeder, described by Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff as a “bad-news Swiss jet-setter”. Booker died in 1998, and by all accounts sounds like she was far too extroverted for the reserved Murdoch.

Mrs Murdoch No.2 was the former Daily Mirror reporter Anna Torv. For decades she looked to be Murdoch’s genetically-blessed perfect fit.

Their 32-year marriage produced three children: Elisabeth, Lachlan and James, but it came to a spectacular end in 1998 as an army of lawyers went into battle over the spoils of the Murdoch fortune. Anna wasn’t going without a fight.

‘Perhaps I was in love with the idea of still being in love with him. But the Rupert I fell in love with could not have behaved this way.’

Rupert Murdoch’s second wife Anna Torv

In a 2001 interview with The Australian Women’s Weekly, Anna broke her silence on the marital demise, saying : “I began to think the Rupert Murdoch that I loved died a long time ago. Perhaps I was in love with the idea of still being in love with him. But the Rupert I fell in love with could not have behaved this way.”

She described his actions during their breakup as “extremely hard, ruthless and determined”, hardly the cuddly romantic so beguiled by the Chinese beauty Wendi Deng.

Enter stage right Mrs Murdoch No.3. Murdoch was 67 when he met 29-year-old Deng at a company party in Hong Kong. They were married two years later, 17 days after the ink had dried on his divorce from Anna.

They were married for 14 years, producing two children Grace, 22, and Chloe, 20.

Rupert Murdoch on his wedding day with third wife Wendi Deng in 1999.Credit: Grace Studio

During the marriage, Wendi was credited with encouraging Rupert to dye his hair a suspicious mahogany tint and making him dress in a more youthful manner. She enlisted personal trainers and once reportedly divulged that her husband didn’t “need” Viagra.

Rupert filed for divorce in June 2013 stating the marriage had “broken down irretrievably.” This followed rumours about Wendi’s close relationship with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

A week before his 85th birthday Murdoch married the former supermodel Jerry Hall, at St Bride’s Church in London in 2016.

The entire Murdoch family was there to witness the minting of Mrs Murdoch No.4. He declared he was “the luckiest AND happiest man in the world.”

Rupert Murdoch reportedly told fourth wife Jerry Hall, pictured here on their wedding day in 2016, over email that their relationship was over.Credit: PA

He even put up with his wife’s smoking, spotted at big parties by her side as she joined the nicotine outcasts for a sly puff.

But six years later it was all over, with Murdoch reportedly ending it via email.

Last month, Smith, a thrice-married, twice divorced widow, declared she and her then-still smitten beau shared the same beliefs and, perhaps most tellingly, “spoke the same language”.

Though given the abrupt ending of their engagement, it appears something got lost in the translation.

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