All You Need To Know About Candace Parker And Anna Petrakova

After becoming teammates, wives, and moms of three, Candace Parker and Anna Petrakova transformed into this.

2012 saw Petrakova enrol at UMMC Ekaterinburg in her native Russia, which is how the two former professional basketball players initially got together. At that point in the WNBA offseason, Parker was already playing abroad for the team. Before things became amorous, they were close friends.

Before their December wedding that year, Parker proposed to Petrakova at the beginning of 2019. Before announcing their marriage and the impending birth of their first child together, two years later, they maintained private connections.

In February 2022, they welcomed a boy named Airr Larry into the family, joining Parker’s ex-girlfriend Lailaa, who is his older sister. Hartt Summitt, the couple’s second child, was born in May 2024 to Petrakova.

Who is the wife of Candace Parker, then? What you need to know about Anna Petrakova is all here.

Petrakova arrived to play basketball at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in the beginning of 2002, having only learned rudimentary English from her older sister Marina, who had relocated to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2000.

“She’d just turned 17 the month prior, and it was my job to get her registered and enrolled in classes for that semester,” former academic coordinator Danny Cottonham recalled to the Daily Advertiser in 2018. “I was not very optimistic about Anna’s future. She spoke fluent Russian, but most of her other communication was with a smile.”

She had one of the school’s most prosperous careers playing women’s basketball after almost four years. She was the first athlete in history to win Player of the Year honours from the Sun Belt Conference.

“I learned everything I know about work ethic there,” Petrakova said of her time at her alma mater. “I learned you can pave your way and make your mark if you work hard and mean well.”

She continued, “Lafayette was the perfect place for me. I didn’t know if I would feel welcomed or would feel like an outcast, but that all went away that first day in Mr. [Cottonham]’s office.”

Basketball is ingrained in Petrakova’s DNA. Her father, Viktor Petrakov, was an NBA player for CSKA Moscow and the national basketball team of the Soviet Union.

“Since I was 8, I played basketball almost nonstop, and it paid off for me,” she told the Daily Advertiser. “I feel like I got really lucky. I never had any major injuries and I chose when to finish my career and wasn’t forced to stop.”

“Lafayette and the Cajuns were a huge step for me. I loved all of it. I would do it all over again and wouldn’t change a thing,” Petrakova added.

She became a pro with the Kazan, Russia-based club Nur after graduating from the University of Louisiana. She played for several teams during her career, including Spartak, CSKA Moscow, Chevakata Vologda, Dynamo Kursk, and UMMC Ekaterinburg, according to the International Basketball Federation.

During her playing retirement during the 2016–17 season, she joined the Russian National Team as an assistant coach.

Parker had been playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg during the WNBA summer when Petrakova joined the team in 2012. The duo then revealed to TIME that one evening after practice, they first shared a kiss. They frequently shared pictures from their team activities on social media with each other.

“There were some drunken nights,” Petrakova told the outlet. “And it would just go further than we would think.”

Of their first kiss, Petrakova recalled, “We’re scared, and we’re like, ‘What the hell was that?’ You are kind of scared to look each other in the eye and then you’re like, ‘Okay, well, what are we? We’re lying to ourselves here.’ “