Energetic, achieving success on Russian television in record time, incredibly beautiful and feminine - that’s how she is, Olga Ushakova, a real “star” of Channel One. She willingly shares details of her life on air and on the Internet, happily talks about her children, but still there are enough “dark spots” in her biography. How did a simple Crimean girl become one of the viewers’ favorite presenters on Russia’s “top” channel? What contributed to the meteoric rise of her career? Is she happy now, having married and given birth to her third child?
Brief biography
- Real name and first name: Masliy Olga;
- Creative pseudonym: Olga Ushakova;
- Place and date of birth: Republic of Crimea, Russian Federation (former Ukrainian SSR), 1982, April 7;
- Higher education; graduated from the National University. Karamzin in Kharkov;
- Height and weight: 176 cm, about 56 kg;
- Marital status, children: married, husband – Adam Karim; mother of many children - raising three daughters;
- Occupation: correspondent, TV presenter.
About the childhood and early youth of Olga Ushakova
The Masliy family (this is the presenter's real surname) often moved from place to place because Olga's dad was a career military man. The nomadic way of life “slowed down” a little on the Crimean peninsula, where the family moved after Olya’s father’s next official assignment, and where the girl was born. By the way, the Masliy family had many children; in addition to the future “star” of Channel One, there were two more children in the family. Moving to a new place means new housing, and of course this is a new school, and Olya had to change schools more often than once every six months, so often her dad was sent to another place of work.
Olga Ushakova in childhood. Photo https://www.instagram.com/ushakovao/
Children - they can sometimes be so cruel, especially in relation to the “new kids” in the class... A beautiful, self-confident girl did not always evoke friendly feelings among her peers when she found herself in an unfamiliar group. The Masliys moved first to Russia, then to Ukraine, and at each new place they began to tease Olya with “linking” to her previous place of residence. If she came to a Russian school, and before that she lived in Ukraine, she was immediately given the nickname “Khokhlushka.” And when it was the other way around (the move happened from Ukraine to a Russian city), they began to tease me with the offensive word “katsapka”. But we ran into the wrong thing! The girl immediately put the insolent people in their place, and when words did not help, she could gain authority with her fists.
She was sent to school at the age of six, and she immediately began to study with excellent marks. They write about many TV presenters, actors, and well-known personalities in show business: “He (she) dreamed (thought) about a career on television. Olya Masliy did not have a dream of getting on the big screen, but she often played out the interview process with her peers and relatives, picking up an object similar to a microphone: most often it was... a comb! The girl’s second hobby was to impersonate a newscaster: she would pick up a newspaper, sit in a “serious” pose at the table and read everything loudly, imitating TV presenters. And sometimes she simply began to retell a book she had recently read, or stopped a potential listener who had “fallen under attack” and spoke on some topic. And Olya could discuss anything: books, regardless of the content, scientific or fiction, she did not read, but “swallowed” in a few days, or even hours.
Then they got grades of four, even three, but as it turned out, Olga was given grades not for knowledge, but for behavior, or rather for fights. The girl’s parents were called to school by the angry teachers, the father or mother of the “victims” also showed up to show the bruises and abrasions on their children, and upon arriving home Olga’s mother and father scolded her a little (for appearances). No one could convince Olya that “teasing” on a national basis is normal: she was convinced that it didn’t matter what the last name was, who came from where, and to those who disagreed (after trying to persuade verbally) she still proved her point of view, giving into the eye. The result is that in the last school the girl graduated from, her authority was undeniable, and no one teased the beautiful and smart girl. The school was graduated with a gold medal, and Olya entered one of the oldest universities in the former Soviet Union - Karamzin Kharkov National University.
Biography of Olga Ushakova
Olga Ushakova was born on April 7, 1982 in Crimea. Since her father was a military man, the family had to change their place of residence often.
According to the TV presenter herself, she never experienced discomfort or stress due to numerous moves. On the contrary, she enjoyed meeting new people and building relationships with them.
Childhood and youth
In Olga Ushakova’s childhood, there were many cases when she had to stand up for herself using her fists.
Sometimes teachers called her parents to school to conduct explanatory work with their daughter. Nevertheless, the girl always managed to enjoy authority among her classmates.
All these difficulties during this period of her biography only strengthened Olga and helped her acquire the qualities necessary for her future profession.
It’s interesting that even as a child, Ushakova liked to take something that resembled a microphone and comment on various events.
Even then, she dreamed of becoming a famous television announcer. She also loved to read books and learn any interesting information.
At the age of 16, Ushakova graduated from high school with honors. After that, she continued her studies at Kharkov University. After receiving her diploma, she and her boyfriend began to develop their own business.
At 23, Olga was already the head of a branch of a trading company promoting large brands.
Soon, a significant event occurred in Ushakova’s biography: she and her lover went to Moscow.
It was there that Ushakova remembered her childhood dream of television, but she felt unsure of her own abilities. Her boyfriend helped her believe in herself.
Start of working career
At the age of sixteen, start living on your own, completely “tearing yourself away” from your parents - not everyone will decide to do this; for such a serious act you need oh, what a strong character! And Olga’s strength of character (remember how she defended her authority at school) was enough for several people from her youth. She moved to Kharkov not because there was a conflict with her parents or something didn’t work out in the family: Olga was simply used to proving her independence since childhood, and after school it already became a way of life, so entering a Kharkov university was a consequence of her habit of doing everything the way she sees fit.
photo https://www.instagram.com/ushakovao/
At the university, the girl meets the father of her future daughters (about personal matters later): at that time he had not yet “grown up” to high positions, but was already striving to achieve success in his career and was planning to move to Moscow. After graduating from university, Olga again has no “backstory” to her work on TV: she and her common-law husband start doing business. The girl promoted well-known brands, and as she admitted in an interview later, it worked out well for her, she even registered her own brand. At twenty-three years old, Olga Masliy is the director of a branch in Ukraine of a large international company.
Olga’s companion finally receives an appointment in Moscow, he calls Olya with him, and she naturally agrees: who would refuse the prospect of living and working in the capital? And here it is, the turning point: the man seriously advised the girl whether she should try her hand at television. Moreover, in those years (the end of the 90s and the beginning of the new century) life on Russian TV was not just in full swing, it was seething: old presenters of the Soviet school left (or were “left” by force), new ones appeared like mushrooms after rain, topical and daring programs. Massive personnel changes required young people, and, having come to Ostankino for an interview, Olga, as they say, “fell into the flow”: they paid attention to the incredibly photogenic, self-confident girl and hired her as an intern.
Work and career growth on Russian television
Olya’s internship lasted about a year, and her main task was to get rid of her very noticeable “southern” accent. She studied with specialists who taught her the correct speech and formed the correct pronunciation, studied carefully the “television kitchen”, agreed to any job, just to prove that she was worthy of working on Russian TV. She came for an interview at Ostankino in 2004: about a year of internship, and suddenly the position as a news anchor on Channel One became vacant. Olga is offered this position, and she agrees, although the working hours were extremely inconvenient for her: she needed a presenter for a news network broadcast to the Far East. Alternately with announcer Andrei Ukhachev, Olga Ushakova (she then took this pseudonym) worked there for four whole years, until 2009.
Many people write about the “rapid” and suspiciously fast career of the current “star” of the First. What if they themselves first tried to polish their pronunciation for a long time, interview completely different people every day, constantly “pass” a mountain of information through themselves, and then say it in a few words on the air. But note that Olya Ushakova does not have a journalistic education! This is how she later described the difficulties she faced then (and regularly has similar difficulties now):
“Announcers are no longer required to only “barely” read from a piece of paper; the presenter must freely present the news, add a fresh note to it, and interest the audience in the news. And if during the broadcast they “put” emergency information under your elbow, which must be voiced immediately, you must understand the topic!”
Olga was saved by her incredible erudition (thanks to all the books and magazines she read in childhood), excellent performance, ability to instantly navigate a situation, and of course, ambition - and how can you achieve success without healthy ambitions? After four years of a “rapid” career (this is sarcasm, if anything) she is transferred from “eastern” news to nightly ones. In 2010, the presenter’s work increased: she was entrusted with being an announcer in the “Other News” program. The project was opened due to the fact that often the story in the main news was topical and interesting, but there was simply not enough airtime to voice the story in detail. Presenter Ushakova, together with her colleague Sergei Babaev, told the audience about environmental problems, interesting events in sports, education, and leisure.
In 2013, Olga was entrusted with a responsible job: she was assigned the role of co-host in “Direct Line with the President of Russia.” She coped with this job brilliantly, and every year until 2017 she is the co-host of this annual program. The year 2014 for the First Channel of Russia is a period of new personnel changes: the working staff of the channel has become sharply younger, new interesting sections have appeared, the news now includes not only official topics, but also non-standard topical stories. Olga Ushakova, who was already a prominent figure on TV and has proven herself well, is being transferred to Good Morning.
The “Good Morning” project a year later received the TEFI award, and undoubtedly, Olya Ushakova had a lot to do with it. At the same time, the girl began to appear on a similar blog, “Good Day,” she is already truly popular and has an army of fans. In 2017, in collaboration with her Good Morning colleague Sergei Babaev, announcer Ushakova reached the finals of the All-Russian TV Workers Competition in the category “Best Morning Program Presenter.” Her competitor (alas, successful) in this competition was only Yulia Vysotskaya, who hosted the “Eating at Home” program at that time.
photo https://www.instagram.com/ushakovao/
In interviews, the already well-known TV presenter of the main channel of Russia now often admits that in relation to her work, she has the “law of meanness in reverse.” Her way of life is a pronounced “night owl”: it is difficult for her to get up early in the morning, and it is difficult for her to start working early in the morning. However, over the years of working on television, she has managed to mobilize herself and “adjust” herself to an inconvenient schedule that she now gets up instantly, quickly gets herself in order, has breakfast on the run (more precisely, in the car), and now she is already sparkling from the screen with a radiant smile. Activity on television, as Olya Ushakova admits, has developed in her a kind of “live broadcast addiction”: she no longer imagines herself in another field of activity, only as a live broadcast announcer.
Hard work on yourself and well-deserved career growth
For almost a year, Olga Ushakova, a TV presenter whose husband supported her in all her endeavors and aspirations, studied the secrets of television behind the scenes. She took rhetoric lessons and studied speech techniques, tried to get rid of her accent and learned to write news articles and prepare news stories from them for broadcasts.
Gradually, the hope that someday she would be allowed on air began to leave Olga. And just at that moment a vacancy became available for a leading news program. Olga was offered this position, and she successfully held this position for 9 years.
In 2014, when no one doubted the professionalism of this woman, she became the host of the Good Morning program, which brought her recognition and love from viewers throughout Russia.
About personal life
She is a rare “frame” for fellow interviewers: she seems willing to talk about her personal life, but manages to avoid answering “hot” topics. One of these points that has interested meticulous journalists for many years is who is the father of the eldest daughters Olga, Dasha and Ksenia? And the girls were born with an amazingly minimal interval of less than a year, and even during the period of the young woman’s active work on TV - in 2005 and 2006. It is already known that Ushakova met him in Kharkov, and it was at his instigation that she moved to Moscow.
The presenter shared in some interviews that the father of the older girls is much older than her, that he had a very strong influence on her as a person, and that he is responsible for her current success: he insisted that the girl go for an interview at Ostankino at one time. According to Ushakova, she still has an excellent relationship with her first common-law husband; she does not object to his communication with her daughters.
Olga Ushakova with her daughters. Photo https://www.instagram.com/ushakovao/
Despite her strong, sometimes even “tough” character, Olga is a very kind and open person. The blow that fate gave her tested the woman’s strength and optimism, and she passed this test with flying colors: the eldest girl Olya has developmental disabilities and is autistic. With enormous efforts, my mother “pulled” Dasha from the list of “non-standard, developmentally delayed children”: the sisters go to the same class, both study equally well. “I don’t demand from teachers that they dance around Dasha with a tambourine - on the contrary, I want her to be on an equal footing with everyone else,” says the girl’s courageous mother. Daria has an ideal memory, according to Olga: she constantly reads, memorizing everything (like her mother, no less!), and already knows English quite well. Olya’s second daughter, Ksyusha, demonstrates excellent taste from an early age and wants to become a stylist.
A trip to the UK in 2013 determined the future life of the famous presenter and gave her a happy family life. In one of the London restaurants, when Olga was standing in line for the cloakroom, two impudent young men tried to “get through” the queue. A pugnacious childhood immediately surged in the young woman’s blood, and she was sharply indignant at the act of the insolent people. The young people began to apologize warmly, and then, as it turned out, Adam (one of them) was so amazed by the pressure of the Russian beauty that he decided to get to know each other better.
Olga Ushakova with her husband Adam Amber
For four years, until 2017, Olga and Adam lived “in two countries”: she worked in Russia, occasionally going out on dates with him, he missed her and dreamed of meeting again in the United Arab Emirates (presumably the country is Adam’s homeland). In the summer of 2017, the couple registered their marriage in Cyprus, the young family “blew up” social networks with romantic photographs of an unrealistically beautiful and happy Olga in a chic white dress on the seashore next to her chosen one. As the young wife of Adam Karim, a restaurateur by profession, said: “He proposed to me so touchingly and unusually: first he asked his daughters for permission to marry me, and then he knelt in front of me and presented me with an engagement ring.”
Quite soon, viewers of the First noticed: their favorite presenter Ushakova was again in an “interesting” position. And on April 14, 2018, information leaked to the media that Olga and Adam had a child, again a girl. Ten days later, happy dad and mom already delighted Olga’s fans with pictures of the baby. According to the presenter, her husband offered many times to go abroad and give birth to a child there, but she refused. “He could take me anywhere, I just had to name the country. My two eldest daughters were born in Russia, I had no intention of changing the place of birth of my youngest child,” Olya then wrote on Instagram.
She quickly recovered after giving birth and, as before, delights viewers of the First with her beauty, good mood and ability to present any information in an interesting and lively manner. Her professional career is developing, work does not in the least prevent the young woman from taking care of her family and raising her daughters. Emergency mode of work, the need to “digest” a huge amount of information, the ability to understand any topic of modern life - this is the adrenaline without which, according to Olya, she cannot imagine herself in the future.
Personal life
Olga Ushakova is a versatile and enthusiastic person. The girl loves her own home, garden and animals. He does yoga and loves horse riding. Olga is also fidgety and easy-going. This quality is probably instilled in the girl since childhood. Olga can easily get ready and fly to Austria for the weekend to visit the Vienna Opera.
In addition to the sea coast, which has a beneficial effect on Olga’s state of mind, the TV presenter fell in love with Moscow. When Ushakova’s sister comes to the capital, Olga happily takes her relative to museums and galleries that she herself has visited.
The personal life of Olga Ushakova is an unloved topic for discussion. The TV presenter does not name the father of her children. According to some reports, the couple lived in a civil marriage. The presenter speaks only in excellent terms about the man. The husband supported Olga when the girl, after moving to the capital, decided to try her hand at television.
From Ushakova’s words it is known that her husband was older and became the support that every woman dreams of. The man gave Olga a lot in terms of spiritual and intellectual development. According to the TV presenter, it can be understood that the couple currently maintain friendly relations at a distance.
Olga Ushakova has two daughters growing up. The girls have different surnames, although they have the same father. Olga does not explain why this is so. It is known that the daughters are the same age. The TV presenter found out about her second pregnancy less than 3 months after the birth of her eldest daughter Dasha. The first girl was soon diagnosed with developmental disabilities, but this did not prevent Olga from becoming a mother for the second time. The second daughter, Ksyusha, was born the same year as her older sister. The girls go to school together in the same class.
Ushakova’s daughters are as versatile as their mother. Dasha and Ksyusha go horseback riding and attend music and choreography schools. They enjoy going to the chess club and ballet studio. And the girls are just as restless as their mother: they love to travel and are easy-going.
Dasha has already decided on her choice of profession - the girl dreams of a career as a translator. The youngest daughter is interested in drawing, including drawing clothes and accessories, and declares her desire to master the profession of a designer. But recently Ksenia began to show extraordinary vocal abilities, so she decided to devote more time to singing.
At the beginning of 2020, it became known that Olga Ushakova was in a relationship with her new boyfriend, who works in the restaurant business and does not live in Russia. The couple managed to maintain a harmonious relationship at a distance. Olga's daughters quickly got along with their mother's new chosen one. Olga Ushakova stated in an interview that she is in no hurry to register her marriage, but is already thinking about a third child.
In the summer, the media surprised fans of the TV presenter with the news about the wedding of Olga and her chosen one that took place in Cyprus. Later, Ushakova herself posted a wedding photo on her personal Instagram account.
Interesting facts about Olga Ushakova
- She wakes up in the morning without problems (despite the fact that she is a night owl), but she always sets two alarms in the evening with an interval of ten minutes. And she has to get up on weekdays at five o’clock.
- Olga has developed the habit of doing everything according to a schedule and plans her day, starting from getting up, down to the minutes. “Only the children, when they decide to get sick, don’t ask about my schedule,” she once complained with a smile.
- In the morning, presenter Ushakova drinks only freshly brewed tea. Then, already at work during a break - decaffeinated coffee (according to Olga, natural caffeine does not affect her).
- Olga often has breakfast on the go in the car, especially if she has to get up not at five in the morning, but at half past four (when she starts the first shift of morning presenters). Olya's lunch always consists of three courses: light soup, vegetable salad, and fish for the second course.
- Optimism is not just a character trait of presenter Ushakova, it is her way of life. “The only thing that can ruin my mood is the child’s illness, the rest is vanity and is not worth an ounce of negative emotions,” she says.
- Hard work does not leave much time for active recreation, but the woman sometimes manages to engage in her favorite sports - rock climbing and scuba diving.
- Books, as in childhood, occupy an important place in Olga’s life. When she is in Moscow and working, in her infrequent moments of rest she “unloads her brain” (her words) with mystical thrillers. Vacation, as she says, is a different matter, where you can get into a serious mood and read something from the classics.
- At over thirty years old, presenter Ushakova doesn’t even think about facial plastic surgery, and she doesn’t need it. Olga admits that she rarely goes to a cosmetologist, but tries to do it regularly: her favorite cosmetic procedures are ultrasonic facial cleansing and mesotherapy.
- Even in her youth she did not like meat, but then she completely abandoned it. Now she is gradually switching from vegetarianism to a plant-based raw food diet.
- The main thing for a woman, according to Olga, is “to have big ears and big eyes - to be able to hear and see people, and first of all, their children.”
- The TV presenter explains the secret of her magnificent appearance simply: “If a person is immersed in sad thoughts, no procedures, no makeup will save him. And when a person is in a good mood, then there is no need for cosmetics - he shines with natural light.”
