Rupert Murdoch’s summer wedding to Ann Lesley Smith was called off last week, barely two weeks after it had been was announced, upon the arrival of spring, in the pages of the New York Post. “We’re both looking forward to spending the second half of our lives together,” Murdoch, 92, said of the union, three days after he’d put a $2m Asscher-cut diamond solitaire engagement ring on Smith’s wedding finger during St Patrick’s Day festivities in New York.
Smith, 66, a former San Francisco police chaplain whose late husband was the country singer Chester Smith (who also founded the Spanish language media giant Univision), told the Post that the union “a gift from God”.
But scarcely two weeks later, Vanity Fair revealed a source close to the media titan told the publication the billionaire had become “increasingly uncomfortable” with Smith’s “outspoken evangelical views” and the wedding was off. A spokesman for Murdoch acknowledged to the New York Times that it would not be a “great leap” to say that the relationship was over.
Smith had raised some eyebrows with how strongly she expressed her religious views at a party in Barbados that she and Murdoch attended over Christmas, a source familiar with the Murdoch social scene told the Guardian.
Smith, who had also once been married to Michael Carabello, percussionist in the acid psychedelic rock band Santana, has spoken publicly in the past about the powerful way that religion changed her life. “The Lord gave me thirst and a...
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