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
In 1993, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. bought a majority share in Asia’s largest broadcaster, Star TV, for half a billion dollars. “The potential in Asia is enormous,” Murdoch said of the deal, a remark that would prove to be prophetic of his personal life as well. Star TV would hire Wendi Deng, a Chinese-born graduate of the Yale School of management, to work as an intern on the business-development team.
