Behind the harmless façade the spies created, they were well-trained agents who had to report to their headquarters in Moscow. All spies had a false identity and received intense training about American culture, martial arts and weapons. “A spy has to be an actor, but an actor that doesn’t need a public or a stage, and doesn’t require the approval of others,” said Elena Vavilova, a former spy (via The Guardian).

Vavilova was born in Russia in 1962. When she was in college, she met Andrei Bezrukov, and they started dating. Both were recruited by KGB, the Soviet Union’s primary security agency (per History), and became well-trained agents, including coding messages, evading surveillance, studying maps and cryptography and intense language lessons (via El Pais). They were sent to Montreal, where they received new identities stolen from dead children — Tracey Ann Foley and Donald Heathfield. In Canada, they had to pretend they had just met and created a whole new story about themselves. Vavilova and Bezrukov lived in Canada and in the U.S. for two decades and had two boys, Tim and Alex.

Vavilova and Bezrukov later moved to Boston, where they lived in a beautiful house on Boston’s outskirts and often traveled abroad for holidays. Bezrukov earned a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard and worked as a consultant. Vavilova worked for a real estate company and loved attending her children’s soccer games at school and organizing barbecues with her neighbors.