Simonyan Breaks Down at Keosayan Memorial

Since December 2024 Margarita Simonyan, head of RT (formerly Russia Today), prayed for her husband, Tigran Keosayan, to recover from a coma, but on 26 September the director died. The journalist still cannot come to terms with the loss and, deeply religious, on the ninth day after his death addressed the departed with a piercing speech.

— Tigrash, I don’t know which table you’re at — I hope it’s mine. We fell in love with each other the first time when, like this, at a restaurant table, we suddenly began reciting poems to each other from memory. And today I want to read to you that I cannot live without you, — Simonyan began her speech, barely holding back sobs.

Margarita read a moving poem by Nikolai Aseev, pouring into it all the pain of those days when she must relearn to look at the world — but now on her own.

— «I cannot live without you! For me the rains without you are drought, and the heat without you brings chill. Without you even Moscow is a wasteland. Without you each hour feels like a year, as if time were shrinking and splintering. Even the blue vault of heaven seems like stone without you», the inconsolable widow declaimed.

At the end of her address Margarita thanked her husband for the 14 years they had been together and promised that sooner or later they would meet again.

— You were mine and part of our home. And the house, I’ll tell you, is bland, dark and nobody’s without you. But since we agreed that death does not exist and that separation — is only a moment compared with eternity, and that we will meet there again, I will linger here and grieve a little longer without you in this chilly house. I will grieve and grieve, and then I will come to you when God says so, — Margarita addressed her deceased husband through tears.

Simonyan and Keosayan met in 2004. The producer wrote to the young journalist to support her amid criticism of her reports. Their correspondence soon developed into frequent meetings. Keosayan was torn because his wife at the time — actress Alena Khmelnitskaya — was waiting for him at home. Only in 2014 did the producer formally divorce his wife. By then Keosayan and Simonyan already had two children together.

Their life together was not always easy, but they tried to be each other’s support. Margarita stood by Tigran when he suffered a first, and then a second, stroke. Simonyan worried about her partner’s health more than her own; she tried to persuade him to give up harmful habits and repeatedly consulted doctors who said Keosayan had no more than three years to live. But, contrary to all forecasts, he lived another 15 years after the first attack.

After Keosayan in December 2024 experienced clinical death and fell into a coma, Simonyan continued to stay by his side. Every day she sat by his hospital bed, but she was not destined to hear words of consolation from her beloved again. On 26 September he died of heart failure, never regaining consciousness.