Mike Tyson’s Secret Pilgrimage to Ukraine—And the Stranger Who Revealed His Foster Mother’s Hidden Past

In a story that never made the headlines, former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson took a quiet, deeply personal journey—far from the roar of the crowd and flashing lights—to a small village in Ukraine. The reason? To walk the same paths once traveled by his foster mother, whose early life remained a mystery until a stranger revealed the truth that brought Tyson to tears.

The trip was unannounced, private, and deeply emotional. Tyson had long spoken of his foster mother—an Eastern European woman who entered his life in a turbulent time and offered him a rare sense of warmth and stability. Though most of the world knew Cus D’Amato as Tyson’s mentor and guardian, few knew that Cus’s partner, a kind Ukrainian-born woman named Galina, had also been a nurturing force in Tyson’s chaotic upbringing.

“She used to tell me about a village with golden fields and bitter winters,” Tyson recalled. “She made it sound like magic, even when I knew her life there had been hard.”

Years after Galina passed, Tyson felt a pull to visit the place she spoke of. Traveling under the radar, he arrived in the Chernihiv region, guided only by a handful of stories and one faded photograph she had once given him. The village was small—only a few dozen homes, a church, and a post office—but the emotional weight it carried was immense.

One afternoon, while walking near the edge of the village, Tyson was approached by an elderly woman who had seen him from her garden. To his astonishment, she recognized Galina from the photo he carried.

“She was my childhood friend,” the woman said in Ukrainian, through a translator. “But there are things she never told you.”

The two sat on a bench beneath a large walnut tree, and the woman began to recount the hidden past of Tyson’s foster mother. She spoke of war, hunger, and resilience. Galina had lost her parents during World War II and survived by sheer will. She later emigrated, leaving behind everything she knew—only to become a quiet hero in someone else’s story.

“I had no idea,” Tyson said, visibly shaken. “She never talked about her pain. All she ever gave me was love.”

The encounter transformed the trip. Tyson, who had come searching for connection, left with a profound sense of gratitude and clarity. “It made me realize that strength doesn’t always look like power,” he said. “Sometimes it looks like a woman surviving a war, then turning around and raising a broken kid from Brooklyn.”

For Mike Tyson, this pilgrimage wasn’t about fame or fanfare. It was about honoring the woman who helped shape him—and learning the full truth about the quiet strength that guided his rise.

“She saved me in ways I didn’t understand until now,” Tyson whispered. “And now I know where that strength came from.”