Remember the 52-year-old WOMAN who married an AFRICAN and gave birth to TWINS? Here’s what happened
“Have you heard about the 52-year-old Russian woman who married an African and gave birth to twins? Well, if you haven’t, keep watching, and I will show you what happened. Her name is Natalia Vedanina. Natalia understood that love doesn’t care about skin color, distance, culture, and age. It’s just a number, and love certainly doesn’t care about what other people think or say either. It transcends and breaks all these barriers, and her story is proof of all these and more.
She lives in Charapovets, a city in Vologda Oblast, and is less than 500 kilometers away from Moscow. Natalya is a nurse who found love at a very young age. She describes her first love as electric, passionate, reckless, delicate, and filled with all the other things you would most likely see in a relationship with two young people. Their relationship was filled with a lot of nights at the club, lots of arguments, and fights. These quarrels were then settled not by their friends or family but by their most effective peacemaker, a bottle of vodka. For her and her lover, all is forgotten and forgiven after they shared a bottle of cheap spirits.
The Russian states that any smart person could tell that her first relationship wouldn’t last forever, but that didn’t stop her and her partner from getting married. Natalya and her partner got married, and then a year after, they had a son named Anatoly. She thought having a child would help their relationship grow stronger and give them a reason to treat each other better. But despite having a child, their relationship couldn’t survive another 365 days. Their son was barely 1 year old when she and her husband chose to go their separate ways following their divorce.
Natalia was wary about giving love a chance again. She had several other relationships, but they never worked out. It seemed like Natalia was never meant to find love, and she was about to stop trying when her friend convinced her to join a dating site. ‘My first few months on the website, I didn’t see anyone I was interested in. I already told my friend that even the dating site wasn’t working for me. I had stopped going there, checking for any updates, or updating my profile. Then I got a message from my Nigerian prince,’ she said.
Natalia got a message from a Nigerian man known as Gabriel Ajayi. When she got his message, she expected this conversation to lead nowhere, just like every other she’s had on the platform. The Russian stated that she only replied as a courtesy, but with time, their chance became more interesting, and she realized that she’s fallen in love with him.
However, there were several obstacles to their relationship. She said, ‘I remember telling myself, “Why would you fall in love with the one person I would probably never get to be with?” Not only were they separated by over kilometers, but there was also the language barrier, and the fact that Gabriel was a prince didn’t make matters easier. Gabrielle’s culture wasn’t very open to having a woman of another tribe as a wife of their prince and their future queen.
What’s a queen who can’t communicate with her own people?” Natalia also explained that Gabriel’s parents didn’t want her to marry their son either. This wasn’t only because she wasn’t seen as one of their people, but there was also the little matter of Gabrielle being 18 years younger than Natalya. The Nigerian was 32 years old; his family didn’t want him to marry someone who they said was old enough to be his mother.
Some of his family members also said that perhaps the reason why the woman was interested in him was that he was a prince. Instead, his parents wanted him to marry someone in their community who understood their customs and tradition. So they forbade the relationship. However, that didn’t stop Gabrielle from talking to the woman he loved. He understood that Natalia loved him for who he was and not because of his status or anything else. The duo continued to chat, and their love for each other only became stronger.
After some time, Gabrielle was able to convince his parents to let him marry Natalia. He organized several video calls in which his parents were able to talk to her and get to know her. His parents realized she genuinely loved their son, so they supported their union. However, they weren’t the only ones who had concerns about Gabrielle and Natalia’s relationship. Some of Natalia’s family members doubted Gabrielle’s intentions.
Some of her relatives believed the Nigerian didn’t love her; rather, they stated that he has other reasons for being with her. Natalia was told that Gabrielle was only using her. ‘People say a lot of things. They said our love was transactional, that I was being deceived and scammed. Many people told me that Gabrielle didn’t love me, and he was only using me to get a residential visa.
They said, “Why would a young man be interested in a woman like me?” It made no sense because they don’t know him as I do. I’m a grown woman, and I can make my choices. I am smart enough to know when someone loves me and when they have other intentions. Gabrielle loved me, and I wasn’t going to let other people tell me what to do. Their opinion didn’t matter. The only person who Natalia sought advice from was her son from her first marriage, Anatoly. He said, ‘I was skeptical about their relationship, but I told her to trust her heart. What’s important to me is our happiness. Anything else is secondary. I wouldn’t deny my mom a chance to find love again.
In 2015, Natalia traveled to the West African country to meet the man she loves. While in Nigeria, the pair got to finally spend time together and get to know each other better. The Russian was worried that they may not like each other as much after living together, but she was wrong. Rather than fall out of love, their feelings for each other only became stronger. Gabrielle proposed to her, and they had a court wedding in 2017. Natalia and Gabrielle went back to Russia together. A few months after returning to Charapovets, Natalia realized she was pregnant. The couple chose not to do an ultrasound; instead, they wanted to find out the gender of their child the old-school way. After 38 weeks of gestation, Natalia gave birth to twin boys.
Despite all the obstacles they faced in the early stages of their relationship, things were finally moving in the right direction. Gabrielle got a job as a truck driver and also worked as an IT specialist. Their family was thriving, and the couple couldn’t be happier. Their story also caught the attention of the media, and the couple appeared on several TV stations.
One night, Gabrielle and his friends went to the club to have a good time, and that’s when things took a drastic turn. Natalia was expecting her husband to come back home by midnight, but instead, she got a call that informed her she was now a widow. The mother of two explained that she cried all night after receiving the call. Gabrielle had a massive heart attack, which made him collapse and die. He wasn’t on any medications. ‘My husband didn’t have any complications about his heart.
I was informed two hours after it happened. Why was I told only two hours later? Our children are just babies; they are just a year old, and they don’t understand anything yet. I would struggle to tell them when it’s time. Sometimes I have to remind myself that my husband is no more with us because it’s hard to accept,’ Natalia explained.
Ten months after the death of her husband, Natalia gave love a chance again. She began dating a man who was 16 years younger than her, an Orlando policeman. Natalia was happy to have found another man she loves. Just like with Gabrielle, she met her new lover on the same dating site. However, the relationship only lasted for a short time, and Natalia was single again. After some time, she received a message from 27-year-old Fyodor Pomerov. Fyodor, who was a bus conductor, had watched Natalia on TV, so he searched for her on social media. They became friends, and after some time, they started dating. The two are now engaged and preparing to get married.
Natalia said, ‘For most of my life, I’ve had people question my choices. But one thing I’ve learned is that people will always talk, so I don’t bother about it anymore. I just do what I want. I do what makes me happy. My happiness is what’s important to me, not what anyone thinks. Age is just a number. Fyodor and I are happy and in love, so nothing else matters.’ What have you learned from Natalia’s story?
