On this day — 17th (O.S. 4th) November 1916 — Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna (1882-1960) married Colonel Nikolai Alexandrovich Kulikovsky (1881-1958). It would be Olga’s second marriage.
It was in 1903, that Grand Duchess Olga noticed Nikolai during a military review, and they became close friends. Olga wanted to divorce her first husband, Duke Peter Alexandrovich of Oldenburg (1868-1924), and marry Kulikovsky, but neither her husband nor her brother, the Tsar, would allow it.
In 1916, Tsar Nicholas II officially annulled the marriage (with ecclesiastical agreement) between Olga and Peter. When the Tsar granted the annulment, he also allowed his sister to marry Colonel Nikolai Kulikovsky.
The marriage took place on 17th (O.S. 4th) November 1916, at the Vasilevsky Church in Kiev. Only the priest, Olga’s mother the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, Olga’s brother-in-law Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, four officers of the Akhtyrsky Regiment, and two of Olga’s fellow nurses from the hospital in Kiev attended. The couple spent their honeymoon at Podgorny, where they visited the grooms parents.
The couple were married for 42 years, and had two sons: Tikhon (1918-1993) and Guri (1919-1984), both of whom were born in Russia. When Grand Duchess Olga married Nikolai Kulikovsky (a commoner) in 1916, she was forced to renounce all rights to the Russian throne as well as those of her descendants.
