Her father, Osman Muftizadeh, was an Azeri Sunni Muslim scholar, while her mother hailed from the Teregulov family of Volga Tatar origin who settled in Tiflis in 1845.

After graduating at age 18, she married engineer Nadir Gayibov,[3] son of Mirza Huseyn Afandi Qayibov and brother of Nigar Shikhlinskaya.

[4] Outgoing and social, the Gayibovins held musical "salons" for foreign visitors, many from Turkey, and also attracting musicians, poets, writers, academics, and artists to gather there.

The salons began to come to the attention of Soviet authorities who viewed them in a political context, suspecting relations with the Turkish government.

Gayibova did not plead guilty and according to her former fellow inmate Zivar Afandiyeva (wife of executed statesman Sultan Majid Afandiyev), while incarcerated, she believed that she would be exiled to Siberia at most.