By Charles Adingupu
Rupert Murdoch, the 92 years old media giant who just perfected divorce with his fourth wife, model Actor, Jerry Hall, has disclosed the collapse of his engagement to the 66 years old former dental hygienist, Ann Lesley Smith now conservative radio host.
Their romance which attracted public glare made headlines in newspapers around the world. Murdoch, old Fox Corporation chairman was compelled to quit the romantic escapedes with his heart-throb over what he described as ” Smith’s out spoken evangelical views which had made him increasely uncomfortable in the relationship.
The duo who had planned to tie the nuptial knot this summer, suddenly announced a break up to the amazement of the world.
What is left in their once enviable romantic entreprise, are echoes of sweet painful memories. Murdoch and Smith were caught by the lens on vacation in Barbados. The pictures which littered both traditional and conventional media spaces, were captioned, “Smith helping a shirtless Murdoch out of the ocean.”
However, a month after that romantic photos, it was reported that Murdoch had concluded arrangement to buy a $30 million, 6,500 square foot co-op on Central Park South that would serve as a home for the lovers in New York.
Bare few weeks after, Murdoch made his engagement public in the pages of his New York Post.
“I was nervous. I dreaded falling in love. But I knew this would be my last. It better be. I’m happy,” he was quoted to have disclosed to gossip columnist, Cindy Adams.
A week afterwards, Murdoch was reported to have given Smith an eleven carat diamond engagement ring estimated at over $2.5 million.
However trouble started when the media began to poke their noses into Smith’s early life as her biography was reportedly shrouded in mystery as next to nothing was known about her childhood. Though available record showed that in her 20s, Smith married John Huntington, a descendant of a wealthy California railroad family. She claimed to lived in an unspeakable affluence in her first marriage as she had all she ever dreamt of.
“I spent $65,000 a month on clothes easily. Money was not an object. I had everything in the world,” Smith told the Christian Broadcasting Network.
She walked from the marriage when it became clear to her that Huntington became an abusive alcoholic.
At one point, her life became suicidal until she found Jesus in a coffee shop. That encounter with the opened her eyes to realities as she became a street preacher in Marine County, California.
“When you let the Lord take control of your life, you can make it. Out of the ruins you can rise and let the oil of his anointing just be all over you,” she was quoted to have said in an interview with the CBN.
In her new world, she found love again as she got married to country music singer and broadcast entrepreneur, Chester Smith.
Few years after, Smith died and Ann Lesley had to engage her stepdaughters in a running legal battle over Smith multi million dollar fortune.
Ann Lesley and stepdaughters threw tantrums at one another. At one, in court documents, a stepdaughter reportedly accused Ann Lesley of “financial elder abuse.”
The court case was settled in 2010 as Ann Lesley absolved herself of any wrongdoing.
However the news Murdoch’s botched marriage to Ann Lesley, came as a big reprieve for his adult children from his second marriage-Elisabeth, Lachlan and James.
Murdoch’s children were excited that Ann Lesley never had children of her own as that would have complicated an already complicated succession battle over the future of Murdoch’s Empire.
But Murdoch’s third marriage to Wendi Deng in 1999 less than a month after his divorce from Anna, was met with strong resistance from his adult children, who vehemently insisted that Murdoch and Deng’s daughters, Chloe and Grace would not be allowed to receive voting shares on the family trust that controls Murdoch’s media empire.
