Vera Nikolaevna MUromtseva was born in Moscow, in a noble professor family. Her uncle, Sergei Andreevich Muromtsev, was the Chairman of the First State Duma. Vera was really well educated. She studied chemistry, could speak 4 foreign languages, did some translations, and was fond of modern literature. In addition, she was very pretty, considered by many to be a number one beauty at her school. Some contemporaries noted her similarity to Madonna. ValentIn KatAyev described her as ‘a tall blonde, with a face looking like carved of stone, with smooth hair-do and a tuft of hair sliding down her neck, a blue-eyed Moscow muted beauty’.     

When Ivan Bunin first met her in TsarItsyno, at MUromtsev’s country house, in 1896, he simply did not pay any attention to her. There was another woman he was obsessing over at the time. However, VEra remembered that meeting very well, on that sunny day in June, near the flowery meadow. She could even recall his face at that moment, which was “fresh and healthy-looking”. It was on November 4, 1906 in the apartment of the writer BorIs Zaitsev, at a literary soiree, where Ivan Bunin was reading his story, and there he noticed “a quiet young lady with the eyes like from Da Vinci”s pictures.” He courted her for a long time before she returned the compliments.

Vera’s parents, especially her mother, were against her desire to make time with Bunin. At that time, Vera MUromtseva was a last year student of Guerrier’s Higher women’s courses, and she had to pass exams and write a thesis. When she came to Professor ZelInsky to discuss the subject of her thesis, he gave her an ultimatum: ‘You have to choose: Bunin or studies’. The marriage of Ivan AleksEevich with Anna TsaknI was not officially annulled, so the church wedding was out of the question. However, Vera agreed to marry Ivan AleksEevich. The daughter’s decision was hard to accept for Vera’s father, but he tried not to show that to her. Later, Vera’s brothers convinced their mother to accept this marriage, as they thought Vera did everything right.

On April 10, 1907, Vera Nikolaevna and Ivan Alekseevich set off on their first trip to the Holy Land. They considered this journey to be a wedding trip. There, at the Holy Sepulcher, they asked for the heavenly blessing of their marriage. After that all their friends, relatives and mere acquaintances saw Ivan and Vera as spouses. They lived in this informal marriage until 1922. Only in France, after they received divorce confirmation, they were able to have a church marriage. Vera Nikolaevna was amazingly calm, imperturbed and sober-minded, she was a real gift of fate for Ivan AleksEevich, who was a nervous, emotional and impulsive person. In his last years, he often said that he couldn’t stop thanking God for giving him such a wife. Vera Nikolaevna wasn’t just a shadow of her renowned husband. She had good writing talent, she did some translations, was keeping a detailed diary, and left wonderful literary memoires of her husband.