Rupert Murdoch’s next wife is from Petaluma

Fifth time’s the charm for Rupert Murdoch, who recently became engaged to Ann Lesley Smith from Petaluma.|

Since the recent announcement of his engagement to journalist Ann Lesley Smith on St. Patrick’s Day, 92-year-old Fox News tycoon Rupert Murdoch’s impending fifth marriage has inspired a cacophony of questions, chiefest among them being, “Who is Ann Lesley Smith?”

Many details have since been uncovered. But one has, until now, gone mostly unnoticed: She grew up in Petaluma.

Ann Lesley Smith, 66 – whose original name was Ann Lesley Krohn – graduated from Petaluma High School in the Class of 1975. Her graduation was announced in the May 21, 1975 edition of the Argus-Courier, listing her among 323 other graduates.

She went on to graduate from Idaho State University, then briefly worked as a dental hygienist, radio journalist, singer-songwriter and part-time model before marrying lawyer John B. Huntington, a scion of the Huntington railroad family, in 1985.

After divorcing Huntington to escape what she once described as years of emotional and physical abuse, Smith embraced evangelical Christianity. In 2005 she married country singer Chester Smith, who was 27 years her senior and owned property in Modesto as well as a successful radio and television empire. They recorded an album together titled “Captured by Love,” and she began doing radio reporting for the Central Valley’s KFIV.

Chester Smith passed away from heart failure three years later, setting off what an Australian newspaper recently described as an “ugly court battle” with her late husband’s children from a previous marriage.

Since then, Ann Lesley Smith has occasionally returned to journalism, hosting a show titled “Ann Lesley Live” on Modesto’s Power Talk 360, while operating a winery and ranch on her Modesto property and overseeing a pair of homelessness charities called Last Chance Ranch and Angels All Over.

The New York Post – which Murdoch owns, along with Fox News, the Times of London, the Wall Street Journal and much else – has reported that the couple met in September of last year. And a recent piece in Vanity Fair reports that Murdoch met his new fiancée last year at a wine industry event at Murdoch’s Moraga vineyard in Bel Air, California. According to that article, Smith and several close friends, with the assistance of a personal shopper, are "feverishly“ searching for “the perfect gown” for the wedding.

Various reports say the couple plans to tie the knot sometime this summer, then divide their time between the United Kingdom, Montana, New York and Northern California.

Smith is said to share her future husband’s conservative views, and according to British newspaper The Daily Mail, has been vocal in propounding several widely debunked conspiracy theories, from denying the existence of COVID-19 to suggesting Bill Gates created it as part of a “plandemic.”

In the New York Post article, Smith describes her sudden romance and impending third marriage as “a gift from God,” and says she’s grateful that she and Murdoch share “the same beliefs.”

For his part, the nonagenarian Murdoch says, “We’re both looking forward to spending the second half of our lives together.”

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