Rupert Murdoch, Ann Lesley Smith’s engagement called off in less than a month

Rupert Murdoch called off his engagement with former San Francisco police chaplain Ann Lesley Smith less than a month after its announcement.

The 92-year-old media mogul and Smith, who is 26 years younger than him, had planned to get married in the summer, in what would have been the Fox Corp chairman’s fifth marriage.

As per the report published in Vanity Fair, the couple has ended their relationship. According to Murdoch’s close aide, the chairman was not comfortable with the evangelical views of Smith.

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Fox Corp’s head, Murdoch, had met 66-year-old Smith at his vineyard Moraga in Bel Air, California last September and had contacted her two weeks later, the media mogul had told News Corp-owned New York Post, which had first put out the news of their engagement.

Last August, Murdoch divorced his fourth wife Jerry Hall. Previously, Smith was married to American musician and radio and television broadcaster Chester Smith till his death in 2008.

On March 17, Murdoch had proposed to Smith during St Patrick's Day festivities in New York. The Fox Corp chairman had given her an Asscher-cut diamond solitaire engagement ring which he had "personally selected".

"I was very nervous. I dreaded falling in love but I knew this would be my last. It better be. I'm happy," Murdoch had said to the Post at the time.

Previously, he had joked that "it better be" his last engagement after his last marriage which ended in divorce after six years.

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The wedding was to take place in late summer and the couple was planning to divide their time between California, Montana, the UK and New York.

The third wife of Murdoch was entrepreneur Wendi Deng, mother to two of his children. The couple split in 2013. From 1967 to 1999, Murdoch was married to his second wife Anna Murdoch Mann, who is a Scottish journalist and with whom he has three children.

Murdoch divorced his first wife Patricia Booker, who was a former flight attendant, in 1966. He has a daughter with Booker.

(With inputs from agencies)

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