Anna Alexandrovna Taneeva was born in Oranienbaum as the daughter of Aleksandr Taneyev, Chief Steward to His Majesty's Chancellery and a noted composer.

Yussupov found her unattractive: Anna the eldest Taneev girl, was tall and stout with a puffy, shiny face, and no charm whatsoever.

In 1907, Anna married Alexander Vasilievich Vyrubov (1880-1919), a Russian nobleman and an officer appointed in the Imperial chancellery.

In her memoirs, Rasputin's daughter Maria claimed that Vyrubova was raped on her wedding night and that Vyrubov "pounced upon her as one would another man in a bathroom brawl and proceeded to beat her as he shouted all sorts of obscenities, most of which she didn't understand.

"[4] Vyrubova's mother reportedly told interrogators following the February Revolution that her son-in-law "proved to be completely impotent, with an extremely perverse sexual psychology that manifested itself in various sadistic episodes in which he inflicted moral suffering on her and evoked a feeling of utter disgust.

[10] Around Easter 1912 Vyrubova stashed Rasputin on a train to Yalta, so he could visit the Imperial family in the Livadia Palace on the Crimea.

[11] In early October 1912, during a grave crisis in Spała, in Russian Poland, the Tsarevich Alexei received the last sacrament.

(The basis for the denunciation of Rasputin as a Khlyst was his participation in mixed bathing, a perfectly usual custom among the peasants of many parts of Siberia.

[20]) On Friday evening 16 December 1916 Rasputin told Vyrubova, who presented him a small icon, signed and dated at the back by the Tsarina and her daughters,[21] of a proposed midnight visit to Prince Yusupov in his Moika Palace to meet his wife.

[25] On 21 December Rasputin's body was taken in a zinc coffin from the Chesme Church to be buried in a secret location in a corner on the property of Vyrubova adjacent to the palace.

[26] [27] The burial was attended by the Imperial couple with their daughters – the tsesarevich was too ill, Vyrubova, her maid, and a few of Rasputin's friends, as Colonel Loman and Lili Dehn.

On 11 March 1917, following the February Revolution, the coffin with Rasputin was dug up and transported to Saint Petersburg State Polytechnical University, and cremated in the cauldrons of the nearby boiler shop, without leaving a single trace.

Sick with measles, Anna Vyrubova was arrested on 21 March 1917 and underwent five months of prison in the Peter and Paul Fortress, which included a medical examination to prove her virginity.

[18] Before leaving the Soviet Union, she became friends with the revolutionary writer Maxim Gorky, who urged her to write her memoirs; she followed his advice.