3 marriages and later happiness of Yuri Bogatikov: Why did the famous performer confess his feelings to his wife only shortly before his departure

2023 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 13:10

He was called "the marshal of the Soviet song", he was a star of the same magnitude as Joseph Kobzon and Muslim Magomayev. “Dark mounds are sleeping” and “Listen, mother-in-law” were sung with him by millions of listeners. Yuri Bogatikov had many admirers and admirers, but he did not immediately find his happiness, and he did not recognize it on the first try. The singer was very fond of the woman who was next to him in the last years of his life, but he could tell her about his feelings only shortly before his departure.

Marshal of the Soviet Song

He was born in 1932 in the Ukrainian city of Rykovo (today - Yenakiyevo), Donetsk region. It seems that the very date of his birth - February 29 - spoke of the special giftedness of the future singer. But he grew up as an ordinary boy. To survive the hungry years, according to the singer himself, only the mother's place of work helped the family, who served somewhere in the kitchen and brought true crumbs to four children, which were enough to not die of hunger.

During the war, the family from Slavyansk, where they lived, was evacuated to Bukhara. There, the singer's father died, and the remaining family members after the war moved to Kharkov. There, Yuri Bogatikov graduated from a communications school and became a mechanic for the repair of equipment at the Kharkov Telegraph. During the day he worked conscientiously, and in the evenings he was engaged in amateur performances, took the first vocal lessons. Soon, not a single concert could do without his participation, people specially came to listen to a talented colleague. The head of the Kharkov Telegraph advised Yuri Bogatikov to enter a music school and seriously think about a singer's career. He entered the evening department, but a year later he went into the army, served in the navy. A few months after the call, his talent was noted by the command, and he became the vocalist of the Song and Dance Ensemble of the Pacific Fleet.

After demobilization, he graduated from college, he was admitted to the Kharkov Theater of Musical Comedy, but he did not work there. He was short, and one of the soloists allowed herself a dismissive statement about this, so he decided to immediately pick up the documents and go to work on the stage, where you can sing solo and not depend on colleagues on the stage. He performed with the Donbass ensemble, then moved to the Kharkov Philharmonic, then to Voroshilovgrad and Crimean. He collected full stadiums wherever he went. In 1985, Yuri Bogatikov was one of the first pop performers to receive the title of People's Artist of the USSR; before him, only Klavdia Shulzhenko and Leonid Utyosov were awarded such an honor.

In searching of love

Yuri Bogatikov met his first wife when he was working at the Kharkov Telegraph. Lyudmila accompanied him to the army, waited for him from service and five years later became the singer's wife. A year later, a daughter, Victoria, was born in the family, but the joint life of Yuri and Lyudmila was very difficult. The spouses clearly lacked mutual understanding and patience.

Yuri tried not to appear at home too often, in addition to his main job at the Philharmonic, he sang in the evenings in restaurants, trying to provide a normal life for his wife and daughter. And once he met the waitress Raisa, with whom he fell in love. He did not lie to his wife, he left almost immediately and, together with his second wife, left Kharkov for Voroshilovgrad, later the couple moved to Crimea together.

Raisa Ivanovna was an imperious and rather tough woman. After moving to Crimea, she limited her husband's communication with relatives, fearing that they would visit him too often in Yalta, where they lived. She didn’t like fuss and didn’t want to bother even her husband’s relatives because of the visits. As a result, three sisters and two brothers of Yuri Iosifovich, arriving in Crimea, always stayed at a hotel, and did not even want to hear about her husband's daughter from her first marriage. Only many years later, when the performer was already married for the third time, the singer's relatives had the opportunity to visit his brother, and the performer himself was finally able to communicate freely with his daughter and grandchildren.

There, in the Crimea, Yuri Bogatikov met Tatyana, however, their path to happiness turned out to be very difficult.

A hopeless romance

Tatiana listened to songs performed by Yuri Bogatikov while still a schoolgirl, but she could hardly imagine that someday he would become her husband. True, she felt sympathy for him from the very moment when she first saw the performer on TV, but you never know girls who fall in love with famous singers in their youth?

After leaving school, the girl worked on Crimean television and, of course, more than once crossed paths with the famous singer, providing the organization of filming with the participation of Yuri Iosifovich as part of the visiting team. The acquaintance took place later, when Tatyana became an editor's assistant and had to discuss the details of the television shooting with the participants of the group concert held in Yalta.

After that memorable concert, Yuri Bogatikov simply approached her and said: "Let's go." She could not resist his charm. That evening, while the banquet was going on in the hotel "Ukraine", they talked for a long time on the balcony, as if not noticing either the multitude of people scurrying around, or the fuss and noise that reigned around. From that very evening, a romantic relationship was established between the girl from television and the famous singer. Tatyana realized that her lover was married and did not build any illusions about this. She just loved and was happy. And she was not at all embarrassed by the age difference with her loved one, who was more than a quarter of a century older than her.

Everyone knew about this novel, but at some point the girl herself decided to end her relationship with the singer. All her girlfriends have long had families, and she risked living her whole life alone. She knew for sure: Yuri Bogatikov would not leave his wife, she herself would never be able to meet with two at the same time.

Soon after breaking up with Bogatikov, she met a man whom she married and gave birth to a son. And everything was fine, except for the lack of real feelings. Son Sasha was three years old when the couple filed for divorce, and soon fate brought Tatyana back to Yuri Bogatikov.

Short long happiness

At that time, the performer was already divorced. Tatiana was not particularly interested in the details, she only knew that it was Raisa Ivanovna who initiated the divorce. Yuri Iosifovich left his wife an apartment in Yalta, lived in a hotel for a long time. The artist's divorce coincided with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and Yuri Bogatikov seemed to be at a loss in the face of such global changes in his life, he even began to drink.

He was saved by his friend, the former first secretary of the republican committee of the party, Leonid Grach. It was with his help that the singer received housing in Simferopol, and he, having seen a lot of alcohol bottles in the apartment of the famous singer, took him literally in an armful and took him to the grave of Yulia Drunina in Old Crimea, asking if he also simply wanted to voluntarily leave this life. The trip had an effect on Yuri Bogatikov like a tub of ice water and still allowed himself to pull himself together.

And soon, during one of the concerts, he met with Tatyana, and they never parted again. At first, Tatyana's parents were against this relationship, especially since he was in no hurry to lead her to the registry office. But as soon as they met the singer personally, they immediately fell under the avalanche of his charm. Yuri and Tatyana Bogatikovs celebrated their wedding with them in 2000. In total, they lived together for 10 years.

The performer never gave Tatyana a reason to doubt her feelings, but he never confessed his love. In the year when the spouses legalized their relationship, Yuri Bogatikov was diagnosed with an oncological disease of the lymphatic system. The singer fought, and his wife sincerely believed that they could defeat the disease. Failed…

The day before his departure, Yuri Bogatikov for the first and last time confessed his love to his wife, saying: "I never thought that I could love you so." Up to this point, it seemed enough for him to show his feelings by actions, and not by words. She still lives with this phrase. Almost 18 years have passed since the singer's death, and Tatiana continues to love him.

She moved to Moscow, worked as an editor at the TV Center channel, and now heads the Center for Russian Culture and Art under the direction of Vladimir Devyatov. And twice a year, on the eve of Yuri Bogatikov's birthday and on the day of his departure, he invariably flies to Simferopol to visit the grave of a loved one at the Abdal cemetery.

Yuri Bogatikov was born on February 29. Those born on this day are called people without age and they say that they are 4 times younger than everyone else, because they can celebrate their real birthday only once every 4 years. This is a unique day, as it only happens in leap years, so it is believed that people who appeared on February 29, are unique from birth.