LONDON • Media baron Rupert Murdoch and former supermodel Jerry Hall got engaged over the weekend after a four-month romance and announced their pending nuptials on Tuesday in the classifieds of a newspaper he owns.
The announcement, which appeared in The Times of London on the Births, Marriages and Deaths page, read: "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."
News Corp executive chairman Murdoch, 84, and Hall, 59, were engaged over the weekend in Los Angeles, his spokesman said. They appeared together at the 73rd Golden Globes ceremony on Sunday - although she was not pictured wearing a ring on the red carpet.
They began dating in the late summer after they were introduced by one of his sisters and a niece in Australia, according to The Times. They went public with their relationship in October at the Rugby World Cup final in London, where they were pictured kissing and cuddling in Twickenham Stadium.
They have 10 children between them and went on holiday with several of them on a yacht in the Caribbean after Christmas.
"They have loved these past months together, are thrilled to be getting married and excited about their future," his spokesman said in a statement by e-mail.
No date for the wedding has been given.
It will be the fourth marriage for Murdoch and, technically, the first for Hall, 59. He split with his third wife, Wendi Deng, a former executive at his Star TV, in 2013 after 14 years.
He was previously married to former air hostess Patricia Booker and later to journalist Anna Torv.
Hall wed singer Mick Jagger in a Hindu ceremony in Bali in 1990, but a court ruled that the ritual was not legally binding when they split up nine years later.
With an estimated fortune of more than US$11 billion (S$15.8 billion), 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."
NEW YORK TIMES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
