As he was going to sleep, he heard the voice of Ekaterina Savinova (1926—1970) — a fellow student also from a peasant family from a far-away Siberian village — and fell in love with her.

[5][6] He studied acting under Boris Bibikov (who later starred in a number of Tashkov's movies) and Olga Pyzhova, graduating in 1950.

His directorial debut happened in 1957 with Past Days Pages, a revolutionary drama shot at the Odessa Film Studio.

The score was written by Andrei Eshpai who turned into Tashkov's close friend and wrote music to the majority of his movies.

In 1962 Tashkov decided to give her the major role in his own comedy movie Come Tomorrow, Please... which he co-wrote with Savinova.

During that time Tashkov noticed that his wife became seriously ill. She was diagnosed with brucellosis which influenced her brain and nervous system and led to sluggish schizophrenia.

He directed two popular spy mini-series: Major Whirlwind (1967) based on the novel by Yulian Semyonov and The Adjutant of His Excellency (1969) written by Georgy Seversky and Igor Bolgarin, although Tashkov claimed that the script was so poor that he had to rewrite it from scratch, but was left uncredited.

After Savinova's tragic death in 1970 Yevgeny lived in a civil union with an actress Valentina Sharykina, and in 1979 he married another actress Tatiana Vasilieva (born 1956) who played the main part in his movie French Lessons (1978) based on the story by Valentin Rasputin.