Rupert Murdoch has called off his engagement to his prospective fifth wife Ann Lesley Smith, just months before they were due to get married.
The 92-year-old Fox Corporation chairman announced his engagement only last month, when he said that the 66-year-old radio host would be his “last” wife.
She was seen last week wearing an 11-carat diamond engagement ring said to be worth around £2 million, and a summer wedding was planned, but sources have confirmed to The Telegraph that the whirlwind romance is now over.
Vanity Fair magazine claimed that Mr Murdoch had become “increasingly uncomfortable” with his fiancee’s outspoken evangelical views.
Mr Murdoch only divorced his fourth wife, model and actor Jerry Hall, last year, and was first seen with Ms Smith in January, when they were spotted on holiday together in Barbados.
Mr Murdoch said after his engagement in March: “I was very nervous. I dreaded falling in love – but I knew this would be my last. It better be. I’m happy.”
He suggested that he expected a long marriage by saying that “we’re both looking forward to spending the second half of our lives together”. But he now appears to have fallen out of love as quickly as he fell in love.
Ms Smith’s first husband was John B Huntingdon, a railway heir, and after they divorced she became a Christian and started preaching in the street in California.
She married the country music singer Chester Smith, and when he died in 2008 she ended up in a court battle with her stepdaughters over his fortune.
Mr Murdoch’s first marriage was in 1956 to air hostess Patricia Booker, the mother of his eldest child Prudence.
In 1967 they divorced and in the same year he married journalist Anna Torv, the mother of Elisabeth, Lachlan and James Murdoch.
Their marriage ended in 1999 and 17 days later he married Wendy Deng, who was 38 years his junior and worked for his STAR TV network. The couple had two daughters, Grace and Chloe.
Mr Murdoch filed for divorce from Ms Deng in 2013, and in 2016 he married Ms Hall, who was 25 years younger than him.
They divorced in August 2022, and Mr Murdoch and Ms Smith first met a month later.
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