Following Rupert Murdoch’s brief and disastrous engagement to a one-time San Francisco socialite who reportedly favored pro-QAnon-style politics, the Fox News mogul decided to take the advice of someone close to him when choosing wife no. 5.
Murdoch, 93, let Wendi Deng, his third wife, play matchmaker and set him up with Elena Zhukova, 67, as the Daily Mail reported. Zhukova is a Russian-born retired molecular biologist at UCLA, but she is less known for her scientific accomplishments than for her ties to the jet-set, high-society world of her daughter, Dasha Zhukova, and her ex-son-in-law, the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich.
Elena Zhukova also was once married to the Russian-born billionaire Alexander Zhukov. Dasha Zhukova, in turn, is known for enjoying close friendships with Deng, as well as with Ivanka Trump and Karlie Kloss.
Murdoch and Elena Zhukova married Saturday at Moraga, the mogul’s Los Angeles-area vineyard and estate. The Daily Mail reported that Deng was in attendance, along with several other “high-powered” people, including New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and News Corp chief executive Robert Thompson.
There’s no word yet on whether Dasha Zhukova attended the wedding with her current husband, billionaire shipping heir Stavros Niarchos, or if Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, were there.
But Deng also reportedly played matchmaker for Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner when she was married to Murdoch. She helped Donald Trump’s daughter get back together with Kushner after the couple briefly split in 2008 over religious differences, the New Yorker reported in 2016. Deng invited the future White House senior advisers to join her for a vacation on Murdoch’s yacht in an attempt to help them repair their broken relationship.
Things went so well on the Deng-hosted yachting vacation that Ivanka Trump resolved to convert to Judaism and she and Kushner were married in 2009, the New Yorker also reported.
As for Elena Zhukova, the Daily Mail reported that Deng also introduced her to Murdoch, with whom Deng shares two daughters. It’s not clear when Deng made the introduction for her ex-husband but by April 2023, he and Zhukova were apparently getting to know each other by going on their own yachting vacation, cruising around the Mediterranean and docking at Corfu.
Murdoch and Deng, an entrepreneur, film producer and art collector, were married from 1999 to 2013. He next spent six years married to former supermodel Jerry Hall, the longtime ex-partner of Mick Jagger. That marriage suddenly ended in the summer of 2022, when Hall was “blindsided” by an email from Murdoch, saying he wanted to end the marriage, Vanity Fair reported in 2023.
Six months after breaking up with Hall, Murdoch began dating Ann Lesley Smith, a one-time dental hygienist and conservative radio host from Modesto who reportedly favors “QAnon-style politics” and who had a pattern of marrying older, wealthy men, including the late John B. Huntington, the scion of one of San Francisco’s most prominent families.
Murdoch became engaged to Smith, the widow of the late Modesto-based TV mogul Chester Smith. In March 2023, Murdoch and Smith stunned the media world by announcing their engagement.
But the engagement soon fizzled, with Vanity Fair reporting that Murdoch realized that Smith’s ultra-conservative politics and evangelical religious views might have been too extreme even for him.
A year after reports surfaced that Murdoch was dating Zhukova, the couple announced their engagement this past March. Zhukova is a twice-divorced specialist in diabetes who has lived in the United States for more than three decades after leaving Russia in 1991. Before retiring, she worked at the medical research unit in UCLA.
