Vladimir Posner - Personal Life

Personal Life

While living in New York, at the age of 12, the young Vladimir ("Vova") had a boyhood crush on a certain Mary, a "stunning" Irish-American woman more than 20 years his senior with a "mane of copper hair" who took him to the movies and served him cocktails at her home. When Pozner returned to the United States after a 38-year absence, she, however, did not wish to see him, preferring instead to be remembered the way she once was.

As a freshman at Moscow State University he once again fell in love with an older woman named Zhenya (Eugenia), moving in with her in a rented room of a communal apartment. Both his and her families disapproved of the torrid affair, which came to an end when Pozner flunked the final exams and was expelled from the university, although later his father managed to persuade the dean to reinstate him on a provisional basis.

In his last year at Moscow University (1958) Pozner married Valentina Tchemberdji, a fellow student at the department of Philology. Two years later they had a daughter, Katia. They divorced in 1968.

Pozner's daughter, composer Katia Tchemberdji, currently lives in Berlin

Around the time of his divorce Pozner met his second wife, Ekaterina Orlova, while they both worked for Novosti Press Agency's Sputnik magazine. They were married for 35 years. Orlova, an accomplished journalist in her own right, was a co-founder of the Pozner School for Television Excellence.

Since 2005 Pozner has been linked with Nadezhda Soloviova, а leading Russian show business impresario.

Pozner holds 3 citizenships: French - by birth, Russian (initially, Soviet) - presumably by descent and US - obtained in the early 1990s by naturalization. Interestingly, in 1968, while attempting to renounce his French nationality so that he could visit France without fear of prosecution for failure to serve in the Algerian War, he was formally notified by the Soviet Foreign Ministry that his Soviet passport, initially granted to him in 1950, at 16, was issued in error, and that he in fact was not a citizen of the USSR. Much to Pozner's amusement this also technically invalidated, among other things, his membership in the CPSU, his marriage and divorce, propiska and his rank of lieutenant in the reserves.

Pozner is a fan of tennis and baseball. In 1992 he co-founded The Moscow Dummies (Московские Чайники, lit. the Moscow Teapots), an amateur baseball team. He is a cigar aficionado. He also collects turtle figurines and fountain pens. He enjoys playing charades.

He is an atheist and has spoken critically of the Russian Orthodox Church and the resurgence of religion in post-Soviet Russia.