[1] Anna Shatilova was born on November 26, 1938, into the family of Nikolai Ivanovich Pankin, a participant in the Great Patriotic War.

From the age of five or six, she began reciting poems on stage, such as the lyrical "Birch Tree" and the patriotic "Ballad of Zaslonov and His Adjutant Zhenka."

[4] The selection was conducted by the leading announcers of the Soviet era Olga Sergeevna Vysotskaya and Yuri Levitan, known throughout the country for the reports of the "Sovinformburo" and the radio news they transmitted from the front during the Great Patriotic War.

[2][5] Immediately after enrolling in the announcer courses, Shatilova transferred to the correspondence department of the philological faculty of the same institute and graduated from it.

In 1963, the young announcer Anna Shatilova was instructed to read an urgent TASS report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy on live television.