He fathered a child, Victoria, during a brief love affair with Russian actress Zoya Fyodorova near the end of World War II, but did not know of her birth until 1973.

In 1945, Captain Tate was a deputy attaché who was stationed in Moscow, where he met well-known Russian actress Zoya Fyodorova at the U.S.

[5] When Soviet leader Joseph Stalin learned of the affair, Tate was declared an unwelcome person and expelled from Moscow, and Fyodorova was arrested and, after a pre-trial detention in the Lubyanka and Lefortovo prisons, sentenced for "espionage" to 25 years in strict regime camp (with the replacement of the imprisonment in the Vladimir prison), confiscation of property and exile for the whole family.

University of Connecticut professor Irene Kirk learned of Victoria's story in 1959 and spent years trying to find Tate in the United States.

In 1974, Tate began a campaign to convince the Soviet government to allow his daughter to travel to see him in the United States.