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 When you tweet with a location, Twitter stores that location. You can switch location on/off before each Tweet and always have the option to delete your location history. Learn more ||||| Sources say Wendi Deng Murdoch was caught off-guard Thursday when served with divorce papers by husband Rupert Murdoch, even though the couple had grown apart. 
 
 Related Topics • Rupert Murdoch 
 
 Shortly after news broke that the News Corp. mogul is seeking to end his marriage of 14 years, rumors began to circulate of possible reasons for the split. While sources familiar with both Rupert, 82, and Wendi, 44, say they have lived increasingly separate lives, especially in recent months, a precise reason for the split was not apparent. News Corp. is set to divide into two separate companies June 28, though sources say the coming business move was not the primary impetus. 
 
 PHOTOS: Rupert Murdoch and Wendi Deng Through the Years 
 
 Another theory floated by several sources is that the marriage was strained by Wendi’s socializing and friendships with a series of men over a number of years, including MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe as well as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt. A spokesman for the Murdochs declined to comment. A call to Wendi's attorney was not returned. 
 
 A New York Times profile in June 2012 noted that Rupert rarely accompanies Wendi to the many charitable functions she attends and that her social circle has grown to include Blair, David Geffen, Bono and Nicole Kidman. 
 
 Rumors of a romantic affair with DeWolfe made their way into media reports in 2008, a few years after Murdoch’s News Corp. bought MySpace for $580 million. At the time, both Wendi Murdoch and DeWolfe declined to comment. Wendi was “chief of strategy” for MySpace. 
 
 PHOTOS: Hollywood's 16 Biggest Divorces Ever 
 
 More recently, there have been hints of a special relationship with Blair, who is said to be a godfather to at least one of Wendi and Rupert's daughters. In an article titled "Tony Blair and the Murdochs: A Family Affair" in The Guardian last year, author Michael Wolff described Blair as one of Wendi’s “first official social conquests” and suggested that she and Blair had joined forces to “handle” Rupert. Wolfe tweeted in May 2012, “Wendi Murdoch and Tony Blair: you heard it here first,” prompting journalist Jacob Weisberg to tweet, “Are you suggesting what I think?” A source close to Blair categorically denies any romantic relationship. 
 
 Schmidt, said to be friends with Wendi Murdoch, was mentioned in 2010 press reports as having invested with her in the New York-based startup Art.sy, meant to match art with prospective buyers. He has been estranged from his wife, Wendy, and according to media accounts has been linked to other women. The New York Times questioned Schmidt about such relationships in August 2012. His response: "I don’t think that is an appropriate question. We don’t comment on that -- rumors.” A Schmidt friend says it's "doubtful" the Google exec would be romantically linked to Wendi Murdoch. 
 
 PHOTOS: Rupert Murdoch's Family Photos 
 
 Rupert Murdoch met Wendi Deng in 1998 when she was an employee of News Corp.'s Star TV in Hong Kong. They married in 1999 and have two daughters, Grace, 11, and Chloe, 9. In recent years, China-born Wendi has played an increasing role in News Corp.'s business in China, as well as producing the Fox Searchlight release Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Sources say she has acted as an intermediary to Chinese officials for several Hollywood executives. Wendi gained national attention in 2011 when she came to her husband's defense after an assailant attempted to hit him with a pie during a hearing in connection with the News of the World phone-hacking scandal. 
 
 The Times reported that the Murdochs were both in New York on Thursday when Rupert filed for divorce in New York State Supreme Court. The filing said that the “relationship between husband and wife has broken down irretrievably.” 
 
 Rupert is represented by divorce lawyer Ira E. Garr. Pamela Sloan will represent Wendi. Murdoch’s divorce in 1998 from his second wife, Anna Maria Torv, cost him $1.7 billion, though he and Wendi are said to have a prenuptial agreement. 
 
 E-mail: Kim.Masters@thr.com 
 
 Twitter: @KimMasters ||||| Is there a bombshell behind Rupert Murdoch’s divorce? A BBC reporter suggests there’s more to come. 
 
 The Murdoch divorce is fast turning into the kind of saga that could sell a million newspapers a day, and in the latest bit of pot-stirring, Robert Peston, the BBC's usually sober and buttoned-down financial correspondent, sent out an extraordinary tweet last night: “‘Am also told that the undisclosed reasons for Murdoch divorcing Deng are jaw-dropping—& hate myself for wanting to know what they are.” 
 
 What could he mean? The incendiary comment is being taken particularly seriously as Peston is said by Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff to be good friends with key Murdoch lieutenant Will Lewis. 
 
 Wolff says: “We can only speculate about what he might mean. However, a year ago, she gave an interview to The New York Times suggesting that they were living independent lives. And Wendi’s emails go through News Corp., so the company surely knows who she is talking to and what she is up to.” 
 
 Wolff’s remark chimes with The Daily Beast’s report yesterday that the couple have been sleeping in separate bedrooms for some time. 
 
 Wolff, added on his Twitter account: "I'm hearing the WHY, the big reveal, the scandal details, could come tomorrow." 
 
 In another tweet he wrote: “Murdoch threatened to do bad things to me (some he did) if I revealed affair w/Wendi started before he left his wife.” 
 
 Peston’s tweet, which slyly suggests he has off-the-record info despite its claim of ignorance, has triggered a predictable guessing game on Twitter as punters attempt to unearth the real reasons behind the split. 
 
 Here are some of the (nonlibelous) ones: 
 
 @asbarboz The reason is money honey. 
 
 @woodoo79 Feels like the press all know the “shocking” reason Murdoch divorce is happening but too scared of the News Corps legal cartel to say it. 
 
 @PTwalnut How ironic would it be if the reason for Rupert Murdoch’s divorce is that the wife doesn’t listen. 
 
 ||||| When Rupert Murdoch in 1998 announced his abrupt separation from Anna Murdoch, his wife of 31 years, almost nobody at the time, including Anna, had any idea, or could reasonably speculate, that Murdoch, then an old 67, might have a girlfriend. 
 
 But he did. And his divorce and remarriage, and the effect it had on his children, social life and executives, would shape the next generation of his company – a romance for our time, as it were. 
 
 With the curt, and blistering, announcement of his decision to file for divorce from Wendi Murdoch, the young woman he met when she was 28 and working for Star TV, his company in Hong Kong, another upheaval begins. 
 
 It was two summers ago that Wendi burst into the news and transformed her public self from harridan to heroine by, with lightning-fast reflexes, blocking a pie attack on her frail-looking husband in the midst of a difficult testimony in Britain before a committee of parliament investigating the hacking scandal. 
 
 This was to many people in the wider Rupert-Wendi orbit an unexpected turnaround. The informed gossip, always pretty granular in detail, had put them on the outs for sometime. She hadn't even diverted from a promotional tour for a movie she'd produced – until the last minute – to be in London with her up-against-it husband. 
 
 Murdoch had told his oldest son, Lachlan, that he'd concluded that marrying Wendi was a "mistake" – or so Lachlan, along with his siblings never a fan of his father's remarriage, was telling people. And during the many months that I was interviewing Murdoch in 2008 for my book about him, we would sometimes meet on weekend mornings at his apartment where it quite appeared he had not slept the night – but, rather, had arrived minutes before me with clothes bundled in his briefcase. 
 
 Indeed, if you imagined two opposite people, save only for their evident mutual ambition, it might be Rupert and Wendi. 
 
 Rupert, the cold, cryptic, scowling, impersonal, rock-hard conservative Australian aristocrat, with his four adult children unable to get over his marriage to the woman 39 years his junior. And Wendi, the energetic, ebullient, social creature, with natural liberal tendencies, whose first job in the US was at a Chinese restaurant and who had given him – "from the fridge", after his prostate cancer – two young Chinese children (and moved her parents to New York). 
 
 And yet, something seemed to work, too. 
 
 There was the orange hair dye; the workout regimes; his protestations that he had finally learned how to be a good father; and his new friendship with, gasp, liberals. David Geffen, via Wendi, became one of Rupert's closest confidants. 
 
 Certainly, business seemed to energize them. I often heard them, like teenagers in love, talking on the phone – albeit about business deals and, more than not, from different cities. I even saw them holding hands. 
 
 But his children continued to dislike her. Even when they made every effort to tolerate her, it was with clenched teeth. And his mother, who died this past year, always refused to meet Wendi. 
 
 For her part, Wendi remained ever-furious with him for not standing up to his children – which included locking their children out of full participation in the trust that controls all the Murdoch assets. 
 
 She led a glamorous social life. In effect, she was the center of the jet set. It followed her: Hollywood, the art world, international super stars. She rejuvenated the jet set. 
 
 Rumors about their relationship dogged them. When the LA Times threatened to go public with a supposed story of infidelity, News Corp had lawyers debrief both husband and wife and convinced the paper to kill its story. 
 
 Robert Peston, the BBC's financial correspondent, who is said to be a close friend of Will Lewis, a key Murdoch lieutenant, tweeted that the real facts of the break-up are "jaw-dropping": 
 
 Am also told that undisclosed reasons for Murdoch divorcing Deng are jaw-dropping - & hate myself for wanting to know what they are — Robert Peston (@Peston) June 13, 2013 
 
 We can only speculate about what he might mean. However, a year ago, she gave an interview to the New York Times suggesting that they were living independent lives. And Wendi's emails go through News Corp, so the company surely knows who she is talking to and what she is up to. 
 
 And yet, during the past year, what people have most noticed is their closeness. She had seemed to become his key adviser, close enough that there has been speculation she would go on the board of the newspaper company being split from the larger entertainment company. 
 
 She had also become, to his children's ever-greater consternation, his gatekeeper. Outsiders did not get to Rupert without going through Wendi. 
 
 But now the split is dramatic. As harsh as the split from Anna. 
 
 And in the fashion that Rupert does things – peremptorily, wrathfully, implacably – it would seem to leave Wendi far out in the cold. There is her 1999 pre-nup, and, to boot, two post-nups. What's more, it is a fearsome thing when News Corp and the Murdoch family close their ranks against you. Indeed, it is not that easy to hire a law firm not conflicted out by its work for News Corp, or the promise of work. Her PR aide, Steven Rubenstein, is on Rupert's payroll – so his help disappears. 
 
 Except, of course, that Wendi knows all Murdoch's secrets. All of them. 
 
 • This article was amended on 17 June 2013 to correct "lightening" to "lightning".
– The gossip mill is churning in the wake of the Rupert Murdoch-Wendi Deng divorce filing. As the Hollywood Reporter notes, Deng's friendships with prominent males from Tony Blair to Eric Schmidt are being poked at (Blair's rep firmly denies the former British PM and Deng "are having an affair"). But sources say Deng was surprised to be served with divorce papers, even though she and Murdoch have been growing distant in recent months (and have been sleeping in separate bedrooms for a while, according to the Daily Beast). The BBC's business editor, Robert Peston, (who, the Daily Beast notes, is "usually sober and buttoned-down") tweeted last night, "Am told that undisclosed reasons for Murdoch divorcing Deng are jaw-dropping - & hate myself for wanting to know what they are." Writes Newser founder Michael Wolff in the Guardian, "We can only speculate about what he might mean." But, he notes, Peston is close with "key Murdoch lieutenant" Will Lewis. And we could be hearing more soon: Wolff tweeted last night, "I'm hearing the WHY, the big reveal, the scandal details, could come tomorrow."