Jane Shirley Smith: Ted Turner’s Second Wife and Family

Jane Shirley Smith, also known as Jane Smith Turner and Janie Smith, was the second wife of American media entrepreneur Ted Turner, the founder of CNN and Turner Broadcasting System. Before their marriage, she worked as a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines. She and Turner married in the mid-1960s, raised three children together, and divorced in 1988.

Although Jane Shirley Smith spent more than two decades married to one of the most recognizable figures in American media, comparatively little reliable biographical information about her has been published. That makes it important to separate documented facts from details repeated by genealogy sites, celebrity databases, and pages that confuse her with other women named Jane Shirley.

Who Was Jane Shirley Smith?

Jane Shirley Smith is best known publicly as Ted Turner’s second wife. Contemporary and biographical sources also refer to her as Jane Smith Turner or simply Janie Smith. A 1991 Washington Post profile noted that “Janie” was the name Turner commonly used for his second wife.

Before meeting Turner, Smith worked for Delta Air Lines as a flight attendant. The Society for American Baseball Research, in its detailed biography of Turner, describes her as a Delta Airlines stewardess and reports that the two met at a Young Republicans gathering. PEOPLE likewise identifies Smith as a Delta Air Lines flight attendant.

Unlike Turner and his later wife Jane Fonda, Smith did not build a highly public career around entertainment, politics, or media. Most reputable sources discuss her primarily in connection with her marriage, children, and the Turner family.

Reliable public sources do not clearly establish Jane Shirley Smith’s date of birth, birthplace, parents, education, or early family history. Websites that publish precise dates or detailed personal profiles without identifying credible underlying records should therefore be treated cautiously.

Jane Shirley Smith Quick Facts

• Full name: Jane Shirley Smith
• Also known as: Jane Smith Turner, Janie Smith
• Known for: Second wife of Ted Turner
• Occupation before marriage: Delta Air Lines flight attendant
• Met Ted Turner: Reportedly at a Young Republicans meeting
• Marriage: June 2, 1964, according to PEOPLE and the Society for American Baseball Research; some reference works list 1965
• Divorce: 1988
• Children: Rhett Turner, Reed Beauregard “Beau” Turner, and Sarah Jean “Jennie” Turner
• Later status: Georgia Public Broadcasting reported in May 2026 that Janie Smith had predeceased Ted Turner. A dependable exact date of death is not clearly documented in the major public sources reviewed.

How Did Jane Shirley Smith Meet Ted Turner?

Smith reportedly met Ted Turner at a Young Republicans gathering after the breakdown of Turner’s first marriage.

Turner had previously married Julia Gale Nye, often referred to as Judy Nye, in 1960. They had two children, Laura and Robert Edward “Teddy” Turner IV, before separating in the early 1960s. Turner and Nye divorced in 1964.

According to the Society for American Baseball Research, Turner met Jane Shirley Smith at a Young Republicans gathering. PEOPLE’s 2026 account of Turner’s marriages cites the same reported meeting and identifies Smith as a Delta flight attendant.

The timing is significant because Turner was then at a pivotal point in his personal and professional life. After his father’s death, he had assumed control of the family billboard business and was beginning the aggressive expansion that would eventually transform him into an international media figure.

When Did Jane Shirley Smith and Ted Turner Marry?

There is a small but important discrepancy in published sources about the year of the marriage.

PEOPLE reports that Ted Turner and Jane Shirley Smith married on June 2, 1964, shortly after Turner’s divorce from his first wife. The Society for American Baseball Research also gives June 2, 1964 as the wedding date.

However, several biographical reference works list the marriage as beginning in 1965, including the Encyclopedia of TV & Radio.

Because two independently published sources provide the more specific date of June 2, 1964, that is the stronger date to use while acknowledging that 1965 appears in some reference material.

What is not disputed is that the marriage lasted until 1988, covering more than two decades of Turner’s rise in American broadcasting.

Jane Shirley Smith and Ted Turner’s Life During the Rise of CNN

Jane Shirley Smith’s marriage to Turner coincided with the period in which he went from running a regional advertising company to becoming one of the most influential media entrepreneurs of the twentieth century.

Turner expanded beyond outdoor advertising into television, sports, and cable broadcasting. His ventures ultimately included TBS, ownership of the Atlanta Braves, and the launch of Cable News Network, or CNN, on June 1, 1980. CNN introduced a round-the-clock cable news format that fundamentally changed television journalism.

Smith was therefore Turner’s wife throughout many of the formative years of his broadcasting career, including the launch of CNN.

That fact should not, however, be turned into a claim that she founded or managed CNN. Reliable sources reviewed for this article do not identify Jane Shirley Smith as a CNN executive, co-founder, journalist, or corporate decision-maker.

Her place in history is more accurately described as part of Turner’s family life during the years in which his business empire expanded dramatically.

Jane Shirley Smith and Ted Turner’s Children

Jane Shirley Smith and Ted Turner had three children together: Rhett, Beau, and Jennie Turner. Turner had two older children, Laura and Teddy, from his first marriage, giving him five children in total. Turner Enterprises confirms the five-member sibling group and identifies Rhett, Beau, and Jennie as Turner’s children with Janie Smith.

Rhett Turner

Rhett Turner was the first child of Ted Turner and Jane Shirley Smith. PEOPLE reports that he was born in 1965 and named after Rhett Butler, the central male character in Gone with the Wind, one of Ted Turner’s favorite films.

As an adult, Rhett developed a career in photography and documentary filmmaking. He worked in positions connected with CNN before establishing Red Sky Productions and later produced environmental and conservation-focused work. His projects have reflected the Turner family’s long association with land conservation and environmental stewardship.

Reed Beauregard “Beau” Turner

The couple’s second son, Reed Beauregard Turner, commonly known as Beau Turner, was born in 1968, according to PEOPLE.

Beau became extensively involved in wildlife conservation. Turner Enterprises identifies him as chairman of the Turner Endangered Species Fund’s board of trustees and as Director of Natural Resources and Biodiversity for Turner Enterprises. His work involves wildlife projects associated with the Turner family’s approximately two million acres of landholdings.

He has also been associated with the Jane Smith Turner Foundation, Captain Planet Foundation, and other conservation organizations.

Sarah Jean “Jennie” Turner

Sarah Jean “Jennie” Turner, the youngest child of Jane Smith and Ted Turner, was born in 196,9 according to PEOPLE.

Known today as Jennie Turner Garlington, she developed a career combining environmental issues and media. She worked as an associate producer with CNN’s environmental programming and later became involved in environmental television, including the PBS series EcoSense for Living.

The environmental work pursued by Rhett, Beau, and Jennie forms an important part of the broader Turner family legacy.

Was Jane Shirley Smith Involved in CNN?

There is no strong evidence that Jane Shirley Smith held an official management or editorial role at CNN.

This distinction matters because her marriage to Ted Turner overlapped almost perfectly with his transformation into a major broadcasting entrepreneur. It would be easy to assume that she worked alongside him in the company, but available biographies do not establish that.

CNN launched in Atlanta on June 1, 1980, while Turner and Smith were married. Turner was its founder and driving business force. Smith was part of his family life during that period, but describing her as a CNN founder, executive, or media professional would go beyond the available evidence.

A trustworthy biography should distinguish between being closely connected to a historical figure and holding a documented professional role in that person’s business.

Why Did Jane Shirley Smith and Ted Turner Divorce?

Jane Shirley Smith and Ted Turner divorced in 1988.

Reliable mainstream sources provide considerably more information about the fact and timing of the divorce than about its private causes. It is therefore safer not to attribute the breakup to a particular event unless supported by direct documentation from the people involved or a well-sourced biography.

Following the divorce, Turner began a relationship with actress and activist Jane Fonda. Turner and Fonda married on December 21, 1991, and remained married until 2001.

The similarity of the names Jane Smith and Jane Fonda can occasionally make summaries of Turner’s personal life confusing. They were different women and belonged to different periods of his life.

What Happened to Jane Shirley Smith After Her Divorce?

Smith largely remained outside the celebrity spotlight following her divorce from Turner.

There is substantially less reliable public reporting about her later life than there is about Ted Turner, Jane Fonda, or the Turner children. This limited public record is itself important: it means claims about Smith’s later career, wealth, residence, relationships, health, or personal life should not be presented as facts merely because they appear on celebrity or genealogy websites.

One recent piece of credible evidence concerns her death. When Ted Turner died on May 6, 2026, at age 87, Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that he had been preceded in death by his former wives Judy Nye and Janie Smith.

This establishes that Smith had died before May 6, 2026.

However, a precise date and cause of Jane Shirley Smith’s death have not been clearly established by the higher-quality public sources reviewed for this article. Unsupported obituary pages that provide exact dates without dependable sourcing should not be used to fill that gap.

The Jane Smith Turner Foundation

Jane Shirley Smith’s name also appears in the Turner family’s philanthropic network through the Jane Smith Turner Foundation.

Public nonprofit records show that the Jane Smith Turner Foundation Inc. has been recognized as a tax-exempt private foundation since January 1995.

Official Turner family biographies continue to mention the organization. Beau Turner has served on its board, while Turner Enterprises also identifies other members of the wider Turner family as being involved with the foundation.

The organization’s continued presence is one of the clearer ways in which the Jane Smith Turner name remains associated with Turner family philanthropy.

Available sources, however, should not be stretched beyond what they document. The existence of a foundation carrying her name does not by itself establish every detail about Smith’s personal role in creating, financing, or managing it.

Jane Shirley Smith Is Not the Jane Shirley From William Smith High School

Search results for Jane Shirley Smith can produce a particularly confusing false match involving an educator named Jane Shirley.

The George W. Bush Presidential Center published an article in 2013 titled Jane Shirley – Exceptional Leaders Need not be the Exception. That article profiles Jane Shirley, the principal of William Smith High School in Aurora, Colorado. She had previously worked as a teacher and school administrator and had operated the Rattlebrain Theater Company.

She is not Jane Shirley Smith, Ted Turner’s second wife.

The confusion happens because a search engine can interpret the words “Jane Shirley,” “Smith,” and related pages as overlapping entity signals. In the Bush Center article, “Smith” is part of the name William Smith High School, not the educator’s surname.

This is a good example of why names in search results should be checked against identifying facts rather than matched only through keywords.

Likewise, historical archive results for women named Jane Shirley or references to a Jane Shirley who attended Smith College should not automatically be connected to Ted Turner’s former wife. Similar words in an index do not establish that two records describe the same person.

Jane Shirley Smith’s Role in the Turner Family Story

Jane Shirley Smith occupies an unusual place in the public history of the Turner family.

She was married to Ted Turner during the period when his ambitions expanded from advertising into television, professional sports, international broadcasting, and CNN. Their three children were raised during those transformative years, and all three later developed interests connected in varying degrees to conservation, environmental communication, philanthropy, and the broader Turner family organizations.

Yet Smith herself remained far less publicly documented than her former husband or children.

That makes restraint especially important when writing about her. It is well supported that she worked for Delta Air Lines, met Turner at a Young Republicans gathering, married him in the 1960s, had Rhett, Beau, and Jennie, and divorced Turner in 1988. It is also supported by 2026 reporting that she died before Turner.

Many other details commonly expected from an online celebrity biography, including her exact birth date, birthplace, education, net worth, and exact date of death, are not established clearly enough by authoritative public sources to state confidently.

FAQs

Who was Jane Shirley Smith?

Jane Shirley Smith was the second wife of CNN founder and media entrepreneur Ted Turner. She had previously worked as a Delta Air Lines flight attendant and was also known as Jane Smith Turner or Janie Smith.

How did Jane Shirley Smith meet Ted Turner?

Published biographies report that Smith met Turner at a Young Republicans gathering in the 1960s.

When did Jane Shirley Smith marry Ted Turner?

PEOPLE and the Society for American Baseball Research report that the couple married on June 2, 1964. Some biographical reference works instead list 1965, so readers may encounter both years.

How many children did Jane Shirley Smith have with Ted Turner?

They had three children: Rhett Turner, Reed Beauregard “Beau” Turner, and Sarah Jean “Jennie” Turner.

Was Jane Shirley Smith Ted Turner’s first wife?

No. Ted Turner’s first wife was Julia Gale Nye, also known as Judy Nye. Jane Shirley Smith was his second wife, and actress Jane Fonda was his third.

Was Jane Shirley Smith involved in founding CNN?

There is no reliable evidence that Smith was a founder or executive of CNN. She was married to Ted Turner when he launched CNN in 1980, but authoritative accounts identify Turner as the network’s founder.

When did Jane Shirley Smith and Ted Turner divorce?

They divorced in 1988, after more than two decades of marriage.

Is Jane Shirley Smith still alive?

No, according to credible reporting available in 2026. Georgia Public Broadcasting reported after Ted Turner’s death on May 6, 2026, that he had been preceded in death by former wives Judy Nye and Janie Smith. The exact date of Smith’s death is not clearly established in the reliable public sources reviewed.

Is Jane Shirley Smith the former principal of William Smith High School?

No. Jane Shirley, the educator who led William Smith High School in Aurora, Colorado, is a different person. The similarity results from “Jane Shirley” appearing alongside the word “Smith” in the school’s name.

The Bottom Line

Jane Shirley Smith was Ted Turner’s second wife and the mother of three of his five children: Rhett, Beau, and Jennie Turner. A former Delta Air Lines flight attendant, she reportedly met Turner at a Young Republicans gathering and married him in the mid-1960s. Their marriage continued through the years when Turner built much of his broadcasting empire and launched CNN before ending in divorce in 1988.

Smith lived a considerably more private life than her famous former husband. That limited public record has allowed inaccurate or unrelated information to appear in searches for her name. In particular, she should not be confused with Colorado educator Jane Shirley or other historical figures whose names happen to contain the same search terms.

The most useful approach to Jane Shirley Smith’s biography is therefore a careful one: rely on established facts, acknowledge conflicting records when they exist, and leave undocumented details unresolved rather than replacing missing information with speculation.

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