At the age of 19, I found love with the composer of Alla Pugacheva
“Over the years, I’ve had 17 marriage proposals. People from different countries have fallen in love with me. I don’t know what I impress them with, apparently I was born with a gold star on my forehead, as Aziz says. And I think I’m good and charismatic .”
This is what pop-folk legend Petya Atanasova, better known as Petra, says in the first part of the conversation in the “Interesting” section. Today she is 60 years old, and her life, in her own words, is about “miracle after miracle”.
“60 is the new 30, because I’m rediscovering many things. Here I became a tik-toker, I also have a gallery where I present bouquets of soaps and my “living paintings”. I lived in Russia for a long time, I graduated from Russian philology there. My mother was a kindergarten teacher there, and my father a hospital director,” says Petra. During the Olympics in Moscow in 1981, she happened upon a concert in the center of the capital and, because she plays the guitar, sneaked onto the stage and began to sing. Hundreds jump to their feet and invite her, inspired. The incident reached the ears of Russia’s Minister of Culture at the time, and he sent a car to pick her up and talk to her.
“Were you the one who ruined our party?” he asks. But he smiled and offered Petra to start singing in the biggest “Moulin Rouge” variety show in Russia.
“There were 700 singers there. Ours didn’t know anything, and my girlfriend and I secretly left the house in the evening to sing. One evening, our fathers followed us and were surprised to see that we were participating in the establishment in question. At the opening, I was introduced as a Bulgarian folk singer, and my mother was surprised when she found out that it was me. And when she heard that I received 490 rubles as a salary, and my father, as a doctor, received 450, she calmed down completely,” laughs Petra. With her first salary, she buys a Siamese cat. It was at this time that she entered into her first marriage with a Bulgarian, who bore her a child. “Unfortunately, we divorced because he replaced me with a Russian woman very quickly. Our family lived far from St. Petersburg, and I wanted to pursue my dream of studying Russian philology at university, and I set out with a heavy heart to do this,” says the singer.
On the plane, the second miracle of her life happens – Lyudmila, the right hand of the biggest designer in Russia – Zaitsev, sits next to her. “She helped me a lot. She took me to her five-star hotel, I chose a black dress with diamonds and gloves. On top of that, she gave me a black fox and a hat. Then she said: “We are going to the Astoria restaurant, I will introduce you to the elite of Russia. And it happened,” says Petra. She fell in love at first sight with Alla Pugacheva’s composer, who presented her with his greatest hits. “And then she went with him on performances all over the world. However, when he proposed with a diamond ring, I refused. Mom didn’t let me. But I have no regrets today, I took all the best from this time and this place,” says Petra.
