Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch and owner of Chelsea has separated from his wife of 10 years Dasha Zhukova, Telegraph.co.uk reports.
The couple, who have two children, said the split was amicable.
In a joint statement, they said, “After 10 years together, the two of us have made the difficult decision to separate, but we remain close friends, parents and partners in the projects we developed together.
“We are committed to jointly raising our two children. We will also continue to work together as co-founders of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow and the New Holland Island cultural center in Saint Petersburg.”
Zhukova, an art collector who is 15 years’ Abramovich’s junior, the independently wealthy daughter of a Russian oil magnate, was Abramovich’s third wife.
The couple were first spotted together in 2005 at a Chelsea-Barcelona game in Spain.
At the time, Abramovich was still married to his second wife, Irina Malandina, and it was thought Zukhova was seeing Lord Freddie Windsor, the son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, after splitting from long-time boyfriend tennis player Marat Safin.
But the friendship strengthened and Miss Zhukova and her father, Alexander Zhukov, were invited to Abramovich’s New Year party later that year.
Her father is himself an oil, metals and banking tycoon who owns a mansion block in Kensington, west London, where his daughter lived, as well as homes in New York and Moscow.
The couple secretly married around nine years ago.
