Being the owner of a media empire allows you to be described in this eloquently flattering way in one of the newspapers you treasure, even if it’s an oil-soaked tabloid like The New York Post: “Rupert Murdoch: professionally, father of media on Earth; personally, the news maker himself. Celebrating this March, the month of his birth; his new news is that he will get married, again”.
He turned 92 on the 11th of last month. It’s never too late. Shortly after, he gave a solitary diamond, pedrota style, to consolidate his new relationship and ask for the hand of this woman, the fifth chosen in his extensive experience. “I’m very nervous. I was afraid of falling in love, but I know this will be my last time. I am happy”, he said.
Who is she, the lucky one? Her name is Ann Lesley Smith, 66, who served as a police chaplain in San Francisco. Her last husband (he died in August 2008) was Chester Smith, a country singer and radio and television executive, although far from the dimension of Murdoch, founder of what many call “Fox country “.
In this nation, almost an independent republic in the United States, the alternative reality predominates, where it does not matter that falsehoods are spread if the audience is offered what they want to hear and this brings abundant profits. A $1.6 billion lawsuit hangs over the network for repeating lies about the election theft of Donald Trump in 2020. While Murdoch acknowledged that such theft did not exist, telling the truth meant that his viewers would defect in droves.
Faced with this economic and legal threat (ethical discredit neither worries him nor gives him sleep), the tycoon found solace one day last September when he visited his Moraga vineyards, in Bel Air (California). Smith was also there and the arrow of love at first sight emerged, they say.
“I became a widow 14 years ago and I have waited for the right time. This is a gift for both of us”, he stressed. She recalled that her late husband developed radio stations and television channels and helped promote Univisión, the most watched Hispanic channel in the US.
“We speak the same language”, he added. In addition, she and Chester Smith also owned vineyards, which became another point of connection between the lovers.
Smith has worked on several things. He was a journalist, dental hygienist, model and singer. He knows the good life and the life of misery.
At the age of 28, Ann Lesley married John B. Huntington, a 47-year-old lawyer and member of one of the most illustrious families in California, pioneers in the expansion of the railroad.
A graduate of Iowa State University, she enjoyed at the time $65,000 a month just for wardrobe expenses. “During the day my life was fun and exciting,” he once declared. His garage was full of luxury cars, and his stables full of thoroughbred horses. At night, however, when alcohol overcame Huntington, it was hell with physical and emotional abuse.
From night to day she was a homeless woman living on charity, she insisted in her confessions. “I had suicidal thoughts”, he assured.
She always commented that her faith in Jesus Christ helped her out of the hole. He developed several occupations until he volunteered for the San Francisco police in the role of what is called a chaplain. That’s how he met Chester Smith, who was raised in a Christian home.
He had started what they claim was the first country music station in California in Modesto in 1963.
So she began to work as a presenter, happy in this other marriage. Chester Smith and Ann Lesley even released an album together. It was titled Captured by love.
After Chester’s death, she continued her radio and journalistic work in the San Francisco Bay Area.
After 14 years, Ann Lesley finds the new man in her life again. Both bring a lot of experience. Murdoch first married air hostess Patricia Booker in 1956. Then came Anna Maria Torv, Wendi Deng and Jerry Hall. Smith closes the list. Or not
