Rupert Murdoch’s new wife, Elena Zhukova, excited about Australian visit

Australia will get its first glimpse of the fifth Mrs Rupert Murdoch on July 25 when Elena Zhukova joins her new husband at the Australian Museum in Sydney for a gala celebration to mark the 60th anniversary of The Australian newspaper.

Newlyweds Rupert Murdoch, 93, and Elena Zhukova, 67, will be in Sydney next month.

It’s shaping up to be a swanky party – one which the Russian-born Zhukova, 67, has been looking forward to for some time, although hundreds of Murdoch’s nervous Australian staff probably do not share her excitement, given sweeping cost-cutting that is under way and job losses in coming weeks.

Through her heavy Russian accent, Zhukova had discussed the trip to Australia during polite dinner conversation among some of Murdoch’s most senior editors last year when she met staff from Murdoch’s homeland.

A group of senior Australian News Corp executives had travelled to Los Angeles for a strategy meeting with their boss shortly before he stepped down as chairman and handed over the reins of his vast global media empire to his elder son, Lachlan Murdoch.

Later that night, during dinner at Lachlan and Sarah Murdoch’s massive Bel Air estate as her new beau reminisced about Australia, Zhukova revealed how much she was looking forward to the trip. The property is a 2323-square-metre French neoclassical-style mock chateau that featured in the 1960s sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. Lachlan and Sarah reportedly paid $218 millionfor it shortly before relocating to Sydney.

While that meeting was brief, a hand-picked group of Murdoch’s friends and family met Zhukova during an extended family cruise last July on the Mediterranean when Murdoch hired the superyacht Christina O for $1 million a week.

It was the same vessel on which the late Aristotle Onassis wooed a grieving Jackie Kennedy, and it has hosted a long line of famous lovebirds, from Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Murdoch enjoys the Barbados sun in the company of Ann-Lesley Smith last year.Credit: chrisbrandis.com / Backgrid

Murdoch and Zhukova became engaged just four months after he ended his two-week-long engagement to evangelical right-wing radio commentator Ann Lesley Smith.

Less than a year after the romantic cruise on Christina O, the couple made it official, marrying over the weekend at Murdoch’s Californian vineyard, Moraga Estate, where he had lived with fourth wife Jerry Hall.

Coincidentally, as the new couple tied the knot, some of Murdoch’s oldest Australian pals were on the other side of the United States in New York for the wedding of the son of former Murdoch confidant and ex-Daily Telegraph and New York Post editor Col Allan.

Those who have met Zhukova, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the retired molecular biologist to this masthead on Monday as “intelligent” and “charming”, but also clearly someone “who knows her way around the corridors of extreme wealth and power”.

Zhukova, twice divorced and a mother of three, was previously married to Russian-born financier Alexander Zhukov, who has lived in London since 1993 and is now a British citizen. The couple separated in 1991 and Zhukova moved from Moscow to the US, where she worked at UCLA and brought up her daughter Dasha in the family’s Jewish faith. She later had twins, Yuri and Katya, from a relationship with George Gause.

Dasha, a high-profile Manhattan socialite, married and divorced celebrity Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. She is now married to Greek shipping heir Stavros Niarchos III, is recognised as a leading art collector and sits on the board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Zhukova is reportedly a friend of Rupert Murdoch’s third wife, Wendi Deng, which is how the couple met.

Given Murdoch had signed prenuptial agreements with his previous two wives, Deng and Hall, it is likely a similar agreement has been made with Zhukova and, given their ages, it is unlikely the couple will have any of their own children, which could potentially impact on the Murdoch Family Trust.

When Murdoch dies, voting shares in the Reno, Nevada-based trust, which controls the family’s media interests, will be transferred from Murdoch to his four oldest children – Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan and James. Youngest daughters Grace and Chloe hold only economic shares in the trust.

When Rupert Murdoch divorced his second wife, Anna Torv, in 1998 after their 32-year marriage, there were rumours it cost the tycoon more than $1 billion, including a $110 million cash payment. However, that figure has been widely dismissed. Rather, Anna agreed not to argue for a half share of the family stock if her husband created a trust to be controlled by his adult children.

This was later extended, amid some friction within the family, to include Deng’s two children, but neither was given voting stocks.

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