After 14 years, two children and a close shave with a cream pie, Rupert Murdoch, 82, filed for divorce from his wife Wendi Deng, 44, on Thursday, saying that their relationship had “broken down irretrievably.” Deng became an overnight celebrity in 2011 when she leaped to her husband’s defense at a British judicial hearing, earning her the moniker "tiger wife." But even before that incident, media couple Murdoch and Deng were subjects of intense press coverage. TIME has condensed their high-profile relationship into a timeline of courtship, marriage and now divorce. —Dan Kedmey
Deng, in an unofficial capacity, wielded influence in Murdoch’s corporate empire. “Wendi gives News Corp. a Chinese face in China,” Joseph Ravitch, a co-founder and partner at a media-advisory firm that once advised News Corp. on its Asia strategy, told the Wall Street Journal in 2000. “She represents not just the company but the owner, and that’s critical in a country where families are very important.”
