LONDON (AFP, REUTERS) - Media mogul Rupert Murdoch will marry actress and former supermodel Jerry Hall after a four-month romance, the couple announced in the British newspaper The Times on Tuesday (Jan 12).
The couple got engaged over the weekend in Los Angeles, where they attended the 73rd Golden Globes gala - although she was not pictured wearing a ring on the red carpet.
Mr Murdoch, 84, executive chairman of News Corporation, which owns The Times, announced the impending nuptials in the Births, Marriages and Deaths section of the newspaper.
"Mr Rupert Murdoch, father of Prudence, Elisabeth, Lachlan, James, Grace and Chloe Murdoch, and Miss Jerry Hall, mother of Elizabeth, James, Georgia and Gabriel Jagger, are delighted to announce their engagement," it read.
The pair started dating in the late summer after being introduced by one of Mr Murdoch's sisters and his niece in Australia.
They made their relationship public in October at the Rugby World Cup final in London, where they were pictured kissing and cuddling in Twickenham Stadium. Between them they have 10 children, and went on holiday with several of them on a yacht in the Caribbean after Christmas.
A spokesman for the Murdoch family said: "They have loved these past months together, are thrilled to be getting married and excited about their future."
No date for the wedding has been given.
It will be Mr Murdoch's fourth marriage and technically the first for Hall, 59.
She had a Hindu ceremony with Rolling Stone Mick Jagger in 1990 in Bali, although a court later ruled that the ceremony was not legally binding when they split up nine years later.
She had dated musician Bryan Ferry before leaving him for Jagger.
Mr Murdoch, an Australian native and American citizen, was married to former air hostess Patricia Booker, journalist Anna Torv and most recently, his former Star TV executive Wendi Deng, whom he split up with in 2013.
Media reports surfaced at the time that Ms Deng, now 47, was romantically involved with Mr Murdoch's good friend and former British prime minister Tony Blair. Mr Blair denied that anything inappropriate had ever taken place.
With an estimated fortune of more than US$11 billion (S$15.8 billion), Mr Murdoch owns some of the world's most famous newspaper titles, including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Post and the British tabloid The Sun.
Less charitable social media users greeted news of the engagement with amusement, with one quipping on Twitter: "Love is not only blind but deaf and can't read... And that goes for both sides."
But Australian Women's Weekly, which is owned by German media group Bauer, dismissed such comments as "cynical" and said: "Good luck to them! Romance is sweet."
