Fifth time unlucky: Rupert Murdoch and Ann Lesley Smith end relationship weeks after getting engaged

Rupert Murdoch and Ann Lesley Smith calls off engagement

Rupert Murdoch is back to being single and eligible. Sources close to the media baron told Vanity Fair that he has called off his engagement to Ann Lesley Smith two weeks after announcing it.

The 92-year old Chairman of Fox Corporation was set to be married to former model and conservative radio talk show host Smith this summer, months after he divorced his fourth wife, Jerry Hall. The news of the break-off came only a week after the Daily Mail reported that Murdoch had proposed to Smith with an 11-carat diamond ring worth more than $2.5 million.

Murdoch was reportedly uncomfortable with Smith’s unabashed evangelist views.

The pair was first snapped together in Barbados this January. In February, The Wall Street Journal, also owned by Murdoch, reported that he was planning to buy a 6,500-square-foot home in Central Park South worth $30 million, possibly for him and Smith to reside in. The following month, in an interview with gossip columnist Cindy Adams for the New York Times, Murdoch said, “I was very nervous. I dreaded falling in love—but I knew this would be my last. It better be. I’m happy,” confirming the engagement.

A widow for 14 years, Smith acknowledged that she waited for the right time which arrived in the last half of her life.