{"id":26281,"date":"2026-05-08T20:25:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T20:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/26281\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T20:25:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T20:25:25","slug":"the-many-love-lives-of-ted-turner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/26281\/","title":{"rendered":"The Many Love Lives of Ted Turner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ted Turner, who died<\/a> on Wednesday at 87, was known for creating CNN and transforming the media landscape with the 24-hour news cycle.<\/p>\n

But he was also a playboy, even through his three marriages and well into his 70s. His paramours had countless stories and grudges about his brazen infidelity, but he somehow still managed to remain friends with many of them \u2014 perhaps a testament to his famed charm.<\/p>\n

Turner may have been polyamorous before polyamory hit the mainstream.<\/p>\n

Known for traveling between his dozens of homes in different places, Turner met girlfriends out and about, everywhere from the CNN headquarters to sailing adventures on his boat. A tall, powerful and charismatic man, he was unabashed about pursuing women and loved the thrill of chase.<\/p>\n

\u201cTed loved women, loved romancing them and was very attracted to beauty,\u201d said Ken Auletta, the longtime media reporter<\/a> who spent about four months with Turner for a 2001 profile<\/a> published in The New Yorker. \u201cThere was a lot of vanity there.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Auletta visited Turner\u2019s apartment above the CNN headquarters at CNN Center in Atlanta, he said he noticed in the small bedroom a large bed under a completely mirrored ceiling \u2014 presumably so that he could watch himself.<\/p>\n

Turner\u2019s three marriages were often rocked by his infidelity and drinking.<\/p>\n

He met his first wife, Julia Nye, with whom he had two children, at a college sailing regatta. Their tumultuous marriage ended in the 1960s, after she believed him to be unfaithful, according to Auletta.<\/p>\n

During his second marriage with Jane Smith, a former Delta Air Lines flight attendant with whom he had two sons and a daughter, Turner, who owned the Atlanta Braves, publicly dated other women and could be seen taking his girlfriends to the baseball team\u2019s games. Those girlfriends included the former Playboy magazine cover model, Liz Wickersham, whom he tried \u2014 unsuccessfully \u2014 to turn into an anchor for a CNN program. In the late 1980s, Turner and Smith divorced.<\/p>\n

And then there was his last marriage, in 1991 and lasting 10 years, to the Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda, a movie star he chased and fell in love with. He won her over, and she was dazzled by him.<\/p>\n

But despite their intense love, he couldn\u2019t stay loyal to her, either. A month after they were married, Fonda found out that Turner cheated on her while she was waiting for him in the motor lobby of the CNN Center, she wrote in her 2005 memoir, \u201cMy Life So Far.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLife had taught me that men, at least those I tended to go for, operate by the Fornicato, ergo sum (I f\u2014\u2014, therefore I exist) principle,\u201d Fonda wrote.<\/p>\n

When he entered their car, she began hitting him with the car phone and dumping water on him, she recalled. She asked him why he had sex with another woman. His response, according to her book: \u201cYes. Yes. I love you madly and our sex is great. I don\u2019t know. I guess it\u2019s \u2026 it\u2019s like a tic \u2014 something I\u2019ve gotten used to doing. I\u2019ve always needed a backup in case something happens between us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, they remained together for 10 years, until she was fed up with his insatiable need for other women. Her own deepening spirituality, including an embrace of Christianity, was another underlying cause. They maintained a friendship afterward.<\/p>\n

In an Instagram post<\/a> on May 6, the day he died, Fonda wrote, \u201cHe swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I\u2019ve never been the same.\u201d She also shared that he\u2019d boast about \u201chow many countries he\u2019d made love to his prior lover in and could I match that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turner suffered profoundly after their split, and though he continued to chase women, \u201cthe great love of his life was Jane Fonda,\u201d Auletta said.<\/p>\n

After the split with Fonda, Auletta recalled Turner taking up with Frederique D\u2019Arragon, a Frenchwoman he met while married to his second wife in the \u201970s.<\/p>\n

Turner was returning from a long sail, swigging from a bottle of vodka, as a crowd came to applaud his boat\u2019s arrival to shore, according to Auletta. Turner pointed to a woman in the crowd, who ended up being D\u2019Arragon, telling her in colorful language to remove her top. Turner also once told her to jump naked into the water.<\/p>\n

In a 2012 interview<\/a> with The Hollywood Reporter, Turner famously revealed he had four girlfriends, and that he would alternate between them, spending one week at a time with each one. They included Elizabeth Dewberry, a novelist, who was with him in New York during that interview for U.N. Week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been flooded with memories,\u201d Dewberry said in a phone interview on Thursday, referring to Turner as \u201can incredible man.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGrief is so weird, and you\u2019re not necessarily remembering the most meaningful or important things, but the memories just surface randomly, you know?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She has been remembering one moment in particular: Before Turner\u2019s 2008 autobiography, \u201cCall Me Ted,\u201d was published, he was worried the book would flop, as he compared projected sale numbers with the television viewership numbers he was used to seeing. Dewberry, an author, explained that the number of books would likely put him on the best-seller list.<\/p>\n

In interviews after his divorce from Fonda, Turner said he missed intimacy.<\/p>\n

In 2012, Piers Morgan told him<\/a>, \u201cYou replaced Jane, for all intents and purposes, with a new system, which is, you have four girlfriends at any one time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turner responded, \u201cHopefully they won\u2019t all leave me at once.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan asked, \u201cHow do you get away with that?,\u201d to which Turner responded: \u201cWith great difficulty.\u201d<\/p>\n