He may be 92 years old but media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s love life still generates headlines — with a new claim emerging on Drudge Report overnight.
The media mogul was said to have been holidaying on a yacht with a new woman, scientist Elena Zhukova.
“He’s got the energy of people half his age,” a source told US news site Drudge Report. “He just might be in love again.”
The report comes just months after Murdoch split from former dental hygienist Anne Leslie Smith, 66.
Describing their whirlwind romance in April as a “gift from God” the couple said they planned to wed this summer. However, they abruptly called off their wedding after a friend close to the couple said Anne had struggled with the publicity.
“She just could not cope with being in the public eye. She is very private,” they said. “They sat down and talked and agreed it was better for them to part.”
MailOnline has contacted Murdoch’s representatives at NewsCorp for comment.
Murdoch’s engagement to and subsequent split from Jerry in April came less than a year after his divorce from fourth wife Jerry Hall was finalised.
He has six children from his previous marriages: daughter Prudence MacLeod, now 65, with his first wife Patricia Booker, daughter Elisabeth, now 54, and sons Lachlan, now 51, and James, 50, with his second wife Anna Mann, and daughter Grace, now 22, and Chloe, 20, who he had with his third wife Wendi Deng.
Murdoch and his fourth wife, former supermodel Jerry, did not have any children together during their six-year marriage.
The pair tied the knot in London in March 2016 in a very low-key ceremony at Spencer House, which overlooks Green Park, after a whirlwind five-month romance.
Murdoch married his first wife, the late Patricia, in 1956, however the pair split in 1967, nine years after the birth of their only child, Prudence.
That same year, he tied the knot with his second wife Anna, a Glasgow-born journalist to whom he was married for 32 years, before their divorce in 1999.
As part of their divorce settlement, she was awarded $1.7 billion, including $10 million in cash, according to CNBC.
Murdoch went on to marry Wendi just 17 days after he divorced second wife Anna. At the time of their wedding Murdoch was 68, while Wendi was just 30.
That marriage lasted 14 years, before it was announced that the pair were divorcing, with a News Corp spokesman revealing in June 2013 that their union had been “irretrievably broken for more than six months”.
Murdoch’s divorce from Jerry — although swift — was not without its controversies, particularly after it was revealed that the supermodel had asked the Los Angeles Superior Court to cancel the divorce petition in early August last year.
But hours after news of the development broke, it emerged that she and Murdoch had settled their break-up agreement and “remained good friends”.
Last June a newspaper claimed that the media tycoon ended their marriage via an email which Jerry was said to have received while waiting for him to arrive in the UK.
She responded by filing for divorce on July 1 in Los Angeles rather than the UK, where they were married.
She then hired a former Met Police anti-terrorism officer to serve Murdoch with the divorce papers at RAF Brize Norton on July 4, after he attended his granddaughter’s wedding nearby.
In her original petition, she said she did not have his full financial information and was seeking it.
In December 2021, just seven months before the news of their impending divorce was reported, the pair purchased a $200 million cattle ranch — called Beaverhead — in Montana, which was previously owned by oil baron Fred Koch and his children.
The purchase of the 340,000-acre ranch, which is located close to Yellowstone National Park, was the priciest ranch sale in Montana history.
In addition to the newly-purchased ranch, Murdoch also owns a $28.8 million estate and winery in the Bel-Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, a ranch in California, a four-story penthouse in New York City that is believed to be worth around $72 million, and a 25,000-acre sheep and cattle farm, called Cavan Station, in his native Australia.
Forbes also reported in 2021 that Murdoch had at one point owned two properties in the UK: an 11-bedroom mansion in Oxfordshire, and an apartment in London.
Although details of Jerry and Murdoch’s divorce settlement or paperwork have not been made public, it is likely that their split was among one of the most expensive in the world — a less-than honorable title that Murdoch has already earned in the past, thanks to his $1.7 billion divorce from second wife Anna.