Budapest Post

Cum Deo pro Patria et Libertate
Budapest, Europe and world news

The planned summer wedding of the 92-year-old media mogul and Ann Lesley Smith is said to have been called off

The planned summer wedding of the 92-year-old media mogul and Ann Lesley Smith is said to have been called off

Rupert Murdoch's engagement to Ann Lesley Smith, a 66-year-old former dental hygienist whom he met at his vineyard in Los Angeles, is said to have been called off after two weeks. It would have been his fifth marriage.
Last month Rupert Murdoch presented an engagement ring to Ann Lesley Smith, a 66-year-old former dental hygienist whom he had met last year at his vineyard in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles. A little over two weeks later, the wedding has been canceled.

A spokesman for Mr. Murdoch declined to comment Tuesday. A person close to him, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share details concerning a personal matter, acknowledged that the planned summer wedding had been called off, adding that it would not be a “great leap” to say that Mr. Murdoch’s relationship with Ms. Smith had come to an end. The wedding would have been the media magnate's fifth trip down the aisle and Ms. Smith’s fourth.

Mr. Murdoch, 92, made the engagement public last month through Cindy Adams, the veteran gossip columnist at one of the many newspapers he owns, The New York Post. After reporting that Mr. Murdoch had presented Ms. Smith with a diamond engagement ring in New York on St. Patrick’s Day, the columnist included a comment from her boss: “I dreaded falling in love — but I knew this would be my last,” he said. “It better be. I’m happy.”

In the days after the engagement, details began to emerge about Ms. Smith, who was born Ann Krohn and attended high school in Petaluma, Calif. Efforts to reach Ms. Smith by phone and via social media were unsuccessful, and she did not immediately reply to a message passed to her by a worker on her property in Escalon, Calif.

In her 20s, while working as a dental hygienist in the Bay Area, Ms. Smith met John B. Huntington, a California railroad heir nearly 20 years her senior. During their marriage, which lasted from 1985 to 1989, she spent lavishly on clothes, rode horses and did charity work, she said in a 2013 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. “Money was no object,” she said. “I had everything in the world.”

Sign Up for Love Letter Your weekly dose of real stories that examine the highs, lows and woes of relationships. This newsletter will include the best of Modern Love, weddings and love in the news.

In 1988, she was involved in an imbroglio at a society gala on the dance floor of the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. Reuters described the melee as “a shoving match between two San Francisco socialites,” Ann K. Huntington (as Ms. Smith was then known) and another guest, Avelina Pritchard. “She pulled my hair,” Ms. Pritchard said in an interview for this article. “She scratched me.” Ms. Smith pleaded no contest to misdemeanor assault and was ordered to donate $3,000 to a shelter for abused women, Reuters reported at the time.

In the interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Ms. Smith claimed that, after her marriage to Mr. Huntington, she had no place to live and had become suicidal because of a stingy prenuptial agreement.

While pressing for greater financial support in court, she alleged that her former husband had been physically abusive. Court documents from the case show that three mental health experts testified on Ms. Smith’s behalf, saying that the marriage had left her with post-traumatic stress disorder, rendering her unable to work. But a psychiatrist who treated Ms. Smith in the late 1980s disputed that assessment in his testimony, according to the court documents.

Ms. Smith’s life began to turn around when she became a Christian, she told the network, adding that she had started doing volunteer work as a chaplain for police departments in Marin County. In 1999, she wed Michael Carabello, a former percussionist in the rock band Santana. The fact of that marriage, which lasted about a year, did not appear in the spate of reports published in the wake of her engagement to Mr. Murdoch.

Her third marriage was to Chester Smith, a radio and television entrepreneur in Modesto, Calif., who had started out as a disc jockey and country singer. Ms. Smith appeared at his side on the cover of “Captured by Love,” a 2005 album credited to “Chester Smith with Ann Lesley Smith.” In the photo, Mr. Smith is holding a guitar and has one foot on the fender of a Rolls-Royce. Ms. Smith is dressed in a police uniform with a priest’s collar, her hand on her husband’s shoulder.

At the time of their meeting, Mr. Smith had been married to his first wife, Naomi Smith, for more than four decades. Together they had built his radio and television business into a mini-empire that included stations in California and Oregon. One of their three daughters, Lorna Scott-Smith, said she had not been invited to her father’s wedding to his second wife. “I never met her,” Ms. Scott-Smith said in an interview.

After Mr. Smith died at age 78 in 2008, another of Mr. Smith’s daughters, Roxanne Storey, sued Ann Lesley Smith in San Joaquin County Superior Court. She alleged that Ms. Smith, the trustee of his estate, had failed to give her and her sisters their fair share of the inheritance.

The case was settled days out of court after Judge Duane Martin admonished Ms. Smith in a ruling, writing that “the court has lost all confidence in her ability to administer the trust other than for her own benefit, in conflict with her fiduciary duty to Chester Smith’s three daughters.”

Mr. Murdoch’s broken engagement comes at a time when he is embroiled in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems against two of his companies, Fox Corporation and Fox News. Last week, a judge in Delaware Superior Court ruled that the case was strong enough to go to trial.

Mr. Murdoch’s fourth marriage, to the actress and model Jerry Hall, ended in divorce last summer after six years.
AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Intel Reports Revenue Beats but Sees 81% Rise in Losses
Politics is a good business: Barack Obama’s Reported Net Worth Growth, 1990–2025
UN's Top Court Declares Environmental Protection a Legal Obligation Under International Law
"Crazy Thing": OpenAI's Sam Altman Warns Of AI Voice Fraud Crisis In Banking
The Podcaster Who Accidentally Revealed He Earns Over $10 Million a Year
UK Government Considers Dropping Demand for Apple Encryption Backdoor
Japanese Man Discovers Family Connection Through DNA Testing After Decades of Separation
Russia Signals Openness to Ukraine Peace Talks Amid Escalating Drone Warfare
Switzerland Implements Ban on Mammography Screening
Pogacar Extends Dominance with Stage Fifteen Triumph at Tour de France
President Trump Diagnosed with Chronic Venous Insufficiency After Leg Swelling
CEO Resigns Amid Controversy Over Relationship with HR Executive
NVIDIA Achieves $4 Trillion Valuation Amid AI Demand
Tulsi Gabbard Unveils Evidence Alleging Political Manipulation of Intelligence During Trump Administration
Centrist Criticism of von der Leyen Resurfaces as she Survives EU Confidence Vote
Trump Announces Coca-Cola to Shift to Cane Sugar in U.S. Production
FIFA Pressured to Rethink World Cup Calendar Due to Climate Change
Zelensky Reshuffles Cabinet to Win Support at Home and in Washington
"Can You Hit Moscow?" Trump Asked Zelensky To Make Putin "Feel The Pain"
Church of England Removes 1991 Sexuality Guidelines from Clergy Selection
Superman Franchise Achieves Success with Latest Release
Hungary's Viktor Orban Rejects Agreements on Illegal Migration
Air India Pilot’s Mental Health Records Under Scrutiny
Jamie Dimon Warns Europe Is Losing Global Competitiveness and Flags Market Complacency
Moonshot AI Unveils Kimi K2: A New Open-Source AI Model
Martha Wells Says Humanity Still Far from True Artificial Intelligence
Nvidia Becomes World’s First Four‑Trillion‑Dollar Company Amid AI Boom
EU Delays Retaliatory Tariffs Amid New U.S. Threats on Imports
Trump Proposes Supplying Arms to Ukraine Through NATO Allies
US Opens First Rare Earth Mine in Over 70 Years in Wyoming
Bitcoin Reaches New Milestone of $116,000
Severe Heatwave Claims 2,300 Lives Across Europe
Declining Beer Consumption Signals Cultural Shift in Germany
Emails Leaked: How Passenger Luggage Became a Side Income for Airport Workers
Polish MEP: “Dear Leftists - China is laughing at you, Russia is laughing, India is laughing”
Western Europe Records Hottest June on Record
BRICS Expands Membership with Indonesia and Ten New Partner Countries
Elon Musk Founds a Party Following a Poll on X: "You Wanted It – You Got It!"
China’s Central Bank Consults European Peers on Low-Rate Strategies
France Requests Airlines to Cut Flights at Paris Airports Amid Planned Air Traffic Controller Strike
Poland Implements Border Checks Amid Growing Migration Tensions
Emirates Airline Expands Market Share with New $20 Million Campaign
Amazon Reaches Milestone with Deployment of One Millionth Robot
Yulia Putintseva Calls for Spectator Ejection at Wimbledon Over Safety Concerns
House Oversight Committee Subpoenas Former Jill Biden Aide Amid Investigation into Alleged Concealment of President Biden's Cognitive Health
Amazon Reaches Major Automation Milestone with Over One Million Robots
Extreme Heat Wave Sweeps Across Europe, Hitting Record Temperatures
Meta Announces Formation of Ambitious AI Unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs
Robots Compete in Football Tournament in China Amid Injuries
China Unveils Miniature Insect-Like Surveillance Drone
×