Rupert Murdoch’s new companion, 66, was once Roman Abramovich’s mother-in-law

Sitting under a sign that reads “Happyland,” here is tycoon Rupert Murdoch as few see him – in vacation mode, relaxed and delighted to be in the company of his new companion.

Murdoch, 92, has been cruising much of the Mediterranean in recent weeks, first aboard the Christina O, the legendary boat created by Aristotle Onassis, and more recently on a second unknown yacht, visiting Greece in particular. visited.

He was sometimes joined by his daughters Grace, 22, and Chloe, 20, by third wife Wendi Deng. They were delighted to see dolphins alongside the yacht and Grace’s Instagram shows that she had her boyfriend Hugo Carney, a fellow student at Yale in the US, with her.

But patriarch Rupert Murdoch — who you may recall planning to marry Ann Lesley Smith this summer — has his own whole new romantic interest in him in the form of retired scientist Elena Zhukova, 66.

Mrs. Zhukova, a petite brunette with a supermodel’s smile, was introduced to Murdoch by Mrs. Deng – in a twist that it is believed not even the writers of Succession would have dreamed up.

Dasha, the daughter of Ms. Zhukova, an art collector and philanthropist who is divorced from Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, is close friends with Ms. Deng, who is an investor in her non-profit art foundation.

The two women spend a lot of time together in New York and anywhere in the world where the art public gathers to party – Venice, Miami and so on.

And it seems that Dasha and Wendi intuitively sensed that Dasha’s divorced mother would be a good fit for her close friend’s billionaire ex-husband who was in between romances.

It turns out they were right, and elegant Elena boarded the Onassis love boat in July. Costing about $760,000 a week to charter, the Christina O is where Grace Kelly held her wedding reception in 1956 after marrying Prince Rainier of Monaco, and where Onassis herself courted JKF’s widow Jackie.

No commitment-phobe, Murdoch has been married four times – to Prudence Booker, Anna Mann, Wendi Deng and Jerry Hall.

The marriages produced six children and created a dynasty that will eventually inherit his media empire, more on that later.

He seems determined to get into a fifth and final marriage after his union with Texan-born supermodel Ms. Hall ended last spring with friends saying they felt they had been drifted apart by his children, particularly the eldest son Lachlan. Within six months, Murdoch had recovered, with widowed radio personality Ann Lesley Smith. They announced their engagement in March… and broke up two weeks later.

Sources close to Murdoch say it’s “very early” to talk about his and Ms. Zhukova’s blossoming bond, but it’s clear that a week-long vacation on a yacht is quite a commitment – especially if you’re only a few years old. are dating. a few months.

So far they have been to Positano and Naples and now they are in Corfu. A friend told the American website The Drudge Report, which broke the news: ‘He has the energy of people half his age. He just might fall in love again.’

So who is Elena Zhukova? A more maternal figure than his previous fiance Ann Lesley Smith, who had no children of her own, would spend a lot of time with her daughter Dasha’s three young children.

Also unlike Ann Lesley, Elena is Jewish by descent and faith. Ann Lesley said in their engagement conversation that her Christianity was a bond with Murdoch. “It’s a gift from God to both of us,” she said. “We share the same beliefs.” However, it was eventually suggested that her “outspoken” Christian evangelical beliefs had caused some friction in the romance, which ended suddenly in April of this year.

Some sources said Mrs. Smith just couldn’t handle the public criticism and that was why they “got around the table and agreed that it was better for them to separate.”

Here, too, Ms. Zhukova will probably prove another proposal. Since her daughter was married to billionaire Roman Abramovich and was indeed involved in the end of Abramovich’s marriage to his first wife, she has previously faced global scrutiny.

She is also somewhat more at home in the upper class than Mrs. Smith, a former dental hygienist. Photos show that Ms. Zhukova has attended numerous charity events and art launches along with her daughter over the past 15 years and seems completely comfortable in a room full of the rich, famous and influential.

Her former husband Alexander Zhukov amassed a fortune reported to be some $7 billion (£5.5 billion) in oil. (Murdoch is worth $17.5 billion – £13.7 billion.) Sometimes described as a playboy, Zhukov has been married three times. He has a private jet, a house in Kensington, a property outside Moscow and a villa in Sardinia.

However, when Alexander and Elena were together, he just started trading PCs in Moscow, having quit his job as a projectionist.

She was a promising young molecular biologist and her home was an apartment in Moscow. Daughter Dasha was born in 1981. At that time, with Russia behind an Iron Curtain, entertainment was provided by folk music and visits to the circus, Dasha says. Russian was spoken at home. For breakfast they ate cottage cheese and pancakes.

The Beatles’ music – smuggled in on a bootleg cassette tape – was a surprising surprise.

The culture shock must have been great when Ms. Zhukova started working at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1991. The marriage to Alexander was on the rocks and she had a chance to take a leap across the globe.

In an interview, daughter Dasha said: “She really did not like what was happening in the medical community in Russia and the attitude towards the scientists.

“Once communism fell, to really make a living you essentially had to deal with the con artists. My mother couldn’t find a place for herself where she felt comfortable.

‘It used to be a developed group, the intelligentsia, and then suddenly you needed very different skills to survive. She just didn’t feel like she wanted to be a part of that.”

Soon after, Ms. Zhukova sent for her mother Maria, who moved in with them in a one-bedroom rental in Houston. Two years later, Ms. Zhukova joined UCLA, the University of California, Los Angeles.

Her specialization was diabetes research. Dasha went to a private school – paid for by her father, who by then had made a fortune from oil.

In 2007, Dasha – no less than a few bobs after her marriage to Abramovich – bought her mother a $9.4 million (£7.4 million) house in Beverly Hills. Dasha and Abramovich separated in 2017 and since then she has been married to Stavros Niarchos, grandson of the famous shipping magnate and heir to his billions.

What, one wonders, does Murdoch’s family think? Sons Lachlan and James reportedly tried to persuade their father not to marry Wendi Deng in 1999. The 2013 divorce was accompanied by a dispute over whether their children, Grace and Chloe, would be allowed to vote in his companies.

There were reports that the family was happy when he married Jerry Hall in 2016 as she would not have children and thus would not affect future plans. Rupert for financial support.

Private Eye alleged that Rupert Murdoch gave Hall’s youngest child, Gabriel, a large sum of money to set up a media company at the Whynow company.

Sources say plans to give Jerry more money in the event of Rupert’s death met with some opposition from the kids and then – suddenly – she got an email saying the marriage was over, leaving her “heartbroken.”

Ann Lesley Smith is said to have similarly broken down when their romance fell apart just days after he picked out a $2 million Ascher-cut diamond with a promise that they would be together for the rest of his life.

Now, on their Mediterranean forays, the Murdoch family has had a chance to get a good look at the woman who makes their father happy.

Lachlan, the heir to the throne, accompanied his father on parts of the journey in his new $150 million yacht Sarissa, along with his wife Sarah. The rest of the audience, including daughter Elisabeth and her British husband, are said to have sailed with Rupert and Elena.

They have turned up en masse — a party of about 40 in all — at the Da Adolfo restaurant in Positano and Lo Scoglio da Tomasso in Naples.

Murdoch’s son James, 51, has not been seen so far. An article in Vanity Fair earlier this year suggested that Lachlan believed James had leaked episodes from the family’s life to the makers of the hit drama Succession.

Lachlan has led the companies with Rupert since 2014. James resigned from the News Corp board in 2020 after a disagreement over editorial policies.

In Succession, the series two finale is set aboard a yacht and it is here that Logan Roy decides which of his children and lieutenants will have to act as a ‘human sacrifice’ and carry the can for the scandals in the parks department, the family leisure business.

From the look of Murdoch’s daughter Grace’s Instagram, there’s only bright blue tranquility – pasta, sunshine and smiles all around. At least until now.