Biography

Had three grandsons and three granddaughters, including Natasha Gregson Wagner and Courtney Wagner, neither of whom attended her funeral.

Was four years older than second husband Nick Gurdin. Since it was considered stigmatic for a woman to marry a younger man, Maria lied about her age, claiming a 1912 birthdate on official documents from the mid-'30s on. (Back then, if somebody really wanted to be younger, they could be - simply by lying to the social security administration.) To muddle the records, she not only changed the year, but the month and date as well, from January 26 to February 8. She went to her grave with the wrong date.

Lived for most of the 1920s in Harbin, China.

Had a late-term miscarriage in 1932.

Came from a family of eight children, with three siblings and four half-siblings. Her parents married in 1905, the year after her father's first wife died in childbirth. Maria, her sister Zoia (February 26, 1906 - September 1985) and half-sister Kalisphenia Liuzunie (October 17, 1904 - July 17, 1995) were the only members of their family to emigrate to the US. Like Maria, Kalisphenia fudged her birthdate on legal records (claiming 1905) because she didn't want people to know she was older than her husband. Apparently, no one in the family questioned how Kalisphenia could have been born only four months before Zoia.