At the ripe old age of 93, Rupert Murdoch is far from having given up on love. The media mogul has just celebrated his marriage – his fifth – to Elena Joukova, a 67-year-old retired molecular biologist whom he has been seeing since last summer. If her name seems familiar, it is also because she is the mother of Dasha Joukova, a wealthy Russian collector and patron who founded, with her ex-husband Roman Abramovitch, the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in 2008. The museum Contemporary art has since established itself as a leading institution on the Moscow art scene.
The couple exchanged vows on Saturday June 1 in Moraga, at Rupert Murdoch's wine estate located in the hills of Los Angeles' Bel Air neighborhood. It was here that he made the first deal to sell most of the Fox, FX and National Geographic movie studio to Disney in 2019. His company News Corporation owns many other assets, including Dow Jones & Company (publisher of the Wall Street Journal) and the publishing house HarperCollins. Last year, Rupert Murdoch handed over the reins of his media empire to his eldest son Lachlan. His youngest son James Murdoch, at the head of his company Lupa Systems, is the majority shareholder of MCH Group which notably owns the Art Basel fairs.
This new marriage should not have any repercussions on the future of the family business, since it is controlled by a trust whose shares belong to Rupert Murdoch and his four eldest children.
