Main man
The first husband of young Edita was the leader of the ensemble in which Piekha sang, Alexander Bronevitsky. He courted the young singer for a long time, about a year and a half. He showed signs of attention, but did not make large gestures.
He could go into a hotel room and treat him to candy. Edita liked simple signs of attention more than luxurious bouquets and expensive gifts.
And she responded to the feelings of a man who was 6 years older than her.
In 1956, the director of the Druzhba ensemble and his soloist got married. This marriage gave birth to a daughter, Ilona , who later also became a singer.
Edita Piekha always singles out Bronevitsky among all her husbands as the main man in life. It was he who made Piekha a star, it was he who taught her a lot about the profession.
Piekha describes her feelings as falling in love. They should have developed into deep love, but this did not happen. The young people completely plunged into creativity.
Even the birth of a daughter could not distract the lovers from the scene; the mother-in-law was mainly concerned with the child . The spouses were all involved in music, on tours, staging new programs.
Childhood of Ilona Bronevitskaya - daughter of Edita Piekha
Ilona Alexandrovna Bronevitskaya was born on February 17, 1961 in the city of Leningrad (St. Petersburg). Her parents were inextricably linked with the world of creativity and belonged to the category of real Soviet “celebrities”. The compositions of her mother, Edita Piekha, were heard from all radios in the country. And his father, Alexander Bronevitsky, was known as the permanent leader of the popular ensemble “Druzhba”. Thus, the creative path of the future celebrity began already in childhood.
Ilona Bronevitskaya in childhood
At first she traveled around the Soviet Union with her star mother. Then she studied pop vocals with her equally famous father. Thanks to the support and help of her parents, Ilona learned to play the keyboard well and also sing beautifully. Our today's heroine began to successfully demonstrate these skills already in early childhood, when she began to appear on stage with her mother. Probably, it was at such moments that little Ilona clearly realized that she could not live without the sound of applause and light and spotlights.
Driven by the dream of a successful pop career, our today's heroine, at the age of seventeen, entered the Leningrad State Institute of Music and Cinematography, where she began studying in the pop department. During this period, her main teachers and mentors were I. R. Shtokbant and P. B. Arkhangelskaya. It was they who gave the young girl a pass into the world of Soviet art.
The husband is jealous
In addition, Alexander was unusually jealous. One day, when Piekha went on tour with Magomayev , he arrived and burst into the hotel room shouting: “Where is Muslim? Where is he? Where are you hiding it? “Muslim is in his room,” Edita answered. “Aha, I’ve already managed to escape!” It was impossible to convince him.
Being jealous, like Othello, Bronevitsky himself did not miss the opportunity to have an affair with someone.
One of these betrayals became the last straw in Piekha’s patience. She found her husband literally in bed with another woman. He tried to explain himself: “ I love you, and sex on the side is just joy, pleasure .” And you and I have love.”
Piekha moved to another room. Feeling humiliated and deceived, she began an affair with KGB Colonel Gennady Shestakov, who later became her husband.
Having learned that Piekha was filing for divorce, Bronevitsky begged his wife to stay, shouted, and cursed her. Piekha said: “I will leave you, you will marry a young woman. So she will take revenge on you for all your betrayals.”
The couple divorced in 1976. Bronevitsky married the young singer Irina Romanovskaya and tried to make a star out of her. The girl cheated on her husband , and in 1988 she went to a party. She locked her 56-year-old husband. At night he became ill. He was found dead in the morning with a telephone receiver in his hand.
Edita is in many ways Bronevitskaya
Edita Stanislavovna Piekha still reproaches herself for her divorce from Alexander Bronevitsky. The singer believes that it was this circumstance that accelerated his decline. San Sanych died at fifty-seven. He died in a Nalchik hotel without having time to dial the ambulance number. This summer the master of the Soviet stage would have turned 75 years old.
His Galatea decided to celebrate the anniversary by going to the authorities for the first time in her life - asking to hang a memorial plaque on her husband’s house.
Galatea with a Polish accent
- Sasha, like Pygmalion, gave birth to his Galatea. I was then a tavern singer, and he was called the bearer and distributor of bourgeois ideology in the country. He was the conductor of the Polish community choir and was the first to see something in the lanky girl who had been wearing the same blouse for several years (there was simply no other!). At first they called the ensemble “Lipka”, and only then they became “Druzhba”. They never told me: eat some porridge, do this! They told me: this is good, this is bad! All! And then I dug like a miner, because I really am a miner’s daughter. I was learning to walk on stage, he saw everything: “You’re detonating!” I recorded myself on a tape recorder, studied with a vocal teacher - he listened to everything. He was strict, explosive, and could lose his temper and yell. But when a woman gives birth, she also screams. And he gave birth to every song, every performer.
Guilty without guilt
- Yes, it’s my fault that I left him. Women's logic was misleading. I thought I could love someone else. It turned out that I couldn’t fall in love after him! I invented these loves for myself and thereby shortened his life. Therefore, I want to do something to dot the i's. I dream of unveiling a memorial plaque on the house where he lived. Bronevitsky was a great man! He did something that had never happened before. “Friendship” gave impetus to all vocal and instrumental ensembles. And “Orere”, and “Singing Guitars”, and “Songmakers”. Zhenya, Bronevitsky’s brother, told me: “You see, old woman, if I had not listened to Shura, then in my life I would never have been able to make a revolution in “Singing Guitars” with Tolya Vasilyev!”
Black wedding dress
— We got married on December 8, 1956. We lived on Grechesky Avenue in a communal apartment. One of the nine rooms was occupied by military sailor-officer Alexander Semenovich Bronevitsky with his wife and two adult sons. San Sanych proposed to me right on the stairs. And I am 174 cm tall (there were no such tall girls in Leningrad back then!), 59 kilos... I thought: “No one else will make such an offer to me. And then, what a great man, what a talent he is, he plays the piano!” I was happy to be getting married and in love to the core. Although the Polish practicality spoke in me: “Agree, otherwise no one else will offer!” We came to the registry office of the Smolninsky district. I was in some kind of black dress. Guests: Andrei Petrov, artistic director of the military ensemble Nikolai Kunaev with his wife, San Sanych’s parents. In the evening I ran into the kitchen and cried bitterly: I dreamed of getting married in a white dress! There was no way to buy it with a scholarship...
Chucha, Gazus and Babon
“Of course, I had no idea when to give birth or how to regulate it. I was supposed to give birth in 1957. Naturally, I had to have an abortion. Then in 58, 59, 60... I came to Bronevitsky’s mother Erika Karlovna and knelt down: “Mom, if I give birth, will you take her up? I can’t take her on tour! Or let’s give the child to my mother, in Poland, but then she will be Polish, and not the daughter of your son Shura.” My mother-in-law told me: “What did you hide before, that you could give birth? And if you can, then give birth!” The girl was born in 1961, her mother-in-law named her Ilona, until she was eight months old I was a mother, and then Bronevitsky sent a telegram: “We’re dying on tour without you!” The people want to see Piekha!” The daughter stayed with her grandmother, where she was raised until the age of fifteen. Ilonka always considered her her mother, and I was not jealous, on the contrary, I was very grateful. When my daughter gave birth to a girl, she came to me for advice: “What to name?” And I said: “Remember who raised you? Let your daughter be Erica.” By the way, Ilona (when she grew up) also went on tour with us. She adored her father and called him “my Chucha.” She is generally a master at inventing names. Dad is Chucha, grandmother is Gazus, son is Shmucha, I am Mamon, Stas is Babon...
Thief Snot and an expensive fur coat
“One day we went on tour, and when we returned to our then apartment on the outskirts, in Kupchin, we discovered that everything had been completely taken out. I remembered that my new fur coat had a mark: one loop was broken. The police combed all the thrift stores and found this fur coat, and then the person who sold it there. When the thieves were brought to the confrontation, they kept asking to take a photo of them with Edita Piekha, because they really love me as a singer. I still haven’t forgotten the name of one of them - Rudomazin. And in Irkutsk, a man named Soplya pulled my wallet out of my bag. I came to the hotel, all in tears. They pulled out more than a thousand rubles - an amount unheard of at that time. Only I had the money, I created matriarchy. And then Bronevitsky honestly admitted that he had a stash of 25 rubles. “If it weren’t for me, we’d be starving right now!” - Shura laughed.
Jealousy, passion and Magomayev
- He was terribly jealous. Hereditary disease. The sailor dad, returning from a voyage, interrogated his beautiful wife. San Sanych absorbed this poison into himself. Then I learned to forgive, just not pay attention to it. I tried to explain that there was no one to be jealous of, but he didn’t understand. And when a person really appeared that I really liked, he was not jealous of him. I didn’t understand that I was a conspirator... I was mercilessly jealous of others: “You’re crying, that means you’re to blame! You are silent, which means you are to blame!” - “But I was at the hairdresser!” - “Prove it!” He came up with brilliant excuses. Once she flew to Cannes as the record holder for the circulation of the Melodiya company, the second winner was Muslim Magomayev, but for some reason they didn’t take Bronevitsky. I came up with the idea of buying Shura a ticket to Cannes to be together. Imagine, at night I sleep in a room on the fifth floor, the window is open. Suddenly I wake up: someone is breathing above me! I turn on the night light - Shura is standing there with a menacing face: “Tell me, where is Magomayev?!” He climbed through the window like a monkey. And there were many such cases. I arrived in Sochi earlier, and suddenly runs up from behind and hits me on the back: “You’re going to see your lover on a date!” So I’ll rip it off for you!”
Vain words
“When we were leaving, I said: “You will fall in love with a woman 25 years younger than you!” She will cheat on you!” And then I uttered such a terrible phrase, I still can’t understand where it came from: “You will die like a dog under the fence!” That's how it all happened. She didn’t like him and constantly went on sprees with different companies. When Shura died in Nalchik, locked in a hotel room, at the door, with a telephone receiver, his passion was “relaxing” in a restaurant. I remembered everything. No, I didn’t wish that for him... The phrase just flew out of my heart because he was so unfairly jealous of me. It all turned out ridiculous. In general, he had an absurd and sad fate. Later we met, communicated, looked for each other, and, perhaps, if he had not passed away, we would have met in a new capacity.
Real lieutenant colonel
Gennady Shestakov served in the KGB and oversaw cultural institutions. By the way, Piekha met Shestakov through the light hand of Bronevitsky himself. Oddly enough, the jealous man did not see a rival in this athletic, handsome man. The news about the relationship between his wife and the KGB curator came as a complete surprise to Bronevitsky.
Shestakov was married at that time, and in this marriage his children grew up. For an officer of such a serious department, divorce meant the ruin of his career, but this did not stop Shestakov.
One day, a high official called him to the carpet: “Do you understand what you are doing, have you forgotten where you serve? Either return to your family, or forget about the shoulder straps.” Shestakov forgot about the shoulder straps.
He resigned from the organs and became the director of the ensemble in which Piekha sang. Shestakov even entered the correspondence department of the Institute of Theatre, Cinema and Music.
The family lived well, the new husband found a common language with his daughter Jonah, who, even after the divorce, congratulated Gennady on his birthday secretly from his mother. But Gennady began to hear rumors that a romantic relationship had arisen between his wife and a member of the ensemble named Solovey.
Whether this is true or not, Shestakov started an affair with the ballerina in revenge. The marriage broke up. Shestakov left the position of director of the ensemble and began to head the Buff Theater, where Igor Kornelyuk and Ilona Bronevitskaya worked.
Shestakov tried to return to his first wife, but to no avail. In 1994, he fell and never got up again - his heart gave out . Edita Piekha took an active part in organizing the funeral. It’s not surprising - after all, they lived with their second husband for 6 years.
Long distance marriage
The third husband of the most elegant Russian pop singer was Vladimir Petrovich Polyakov. A high-ranking official, an employee of the analytical service of the Russian Presidential Administration, he could become a stone wall and a reliable shoulder for the singer .
Polyakov was in love with the singer from a young age, and never dreamed of ever meeting her in person. The man had two unsuccessful marriages behind him, but at the time he met the woman of his dreams, he was completely free.
They met at Piekha’s closed speech before the country’s political elite. And then the telephone romance began . The politician lived in Moscow, the singer lived in St. Petersburg, and they had intimate conversations on the phone for hours. This went on for two years.
In 1994, Piekha and Polyakov got married. The couple continued to live in two cities, and this could not but affect the relationship. After Polyakov retired, he asked Piekha to move to Moscow, but she insisted that her husband settle in St. Petersburg. As a result, the singer herself filed for divorce, and the couple divorced in 2006.
