Did she even know his name?

YONKERS, N.Y. - Vicky Pelaez met her husband, Juan Lazaro - or so he called himself - 30 years ago in her native Peru. She was a gutsy TV reporter; he, a talented photographer and a karate black belt. "To her, he was a hunk," a friend says.

They were soon married and living in a leafy New York suburb, raising a young son along with Vicky's older one, proudly watching him develop into a talented pianist. And now, three decades later, the family suddenly torn asunder, her lawyer says she likely never even knew Juan's real name: Mikhail Vasenkov.

It's one of the more tantalizing mysteries to emerge from the spy saga that has entranced the world: Could a wife be in the dark even about her husband's very name?

And the broader question: Was Pelaez - deported Thursday in a spy swap along with her husband - an enthusiastic secret agent who, like him, was willing to put her loyalty to Moscow over that of her children? Or was she a wife betrayed?

One thing was clear on Friday, hours after Pelaez, 55, and Vasenkov, 66, arrived in Vienna, en route to Moscow: A family was in tatters.

In Yonkers, a gaggle of journalists parked outside the family's two-story, brick-and-stucco home, waiting to talk to the couple's son, Juan Jr., 17, and his stepbrother, Waldo Mariscal, 38, an architect.

Mariscal told reporters he didn't believe his parents were spies. "The only Russian thing that she likes is vodka with passion fruit," he said of his mother.

He acknowledged the family would lose the house, since it was paid for by the Russians, but added: "My parents paid [for] this house with their sacrifices since 1995." He said he didn't know where he and his brother would live.

Pelaez's lawyer, John Rodriguez, said she plans to go back to Peru, where her family has a ranch, and where she hoped to continue writing for El Diario La Prensa, a well-known Spanish-language newspaper.

It was in Lima, the capital, that the couple met in the early 1980s. Peru was in turmoil, with leftist rebels ascendant. Vicky was working for Channel 2, Frecuencia Latina. The man she knew as Juan Lazaro was a talented freelance photographer.

Delfina Prieto, who worked with Lazaro at the Peruvian magazine Punto, called him "a magnificent person, a great companion." But she questioned his origins, as did others.

"I would always think, 'This guy has a European accent,' " she said.

It is not known what Pelaez knew of his origins. The complaint says agents intercepted a conversation inside the Yonkers home in 2002, where Lazaro was heard describing his childhood to her, saying: "We moved to Siberia . . . as soon as the war started."

Her lawyer said Thursday his client "seemed shocked" to learn that Juan Lazaro was not his real name.

In any case, the two were deeply in love, according to one of Pelaez's colleagues in Peru, TV reporter Monica Chang. "She was a very passionate woman," Chang said in a TV interview. "To her, he was a hunk."

Pelaez established a reputation as a gritty street reporter. Then, in December 1984, she was kidnapped for a day by members of the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, one of the country's main communist armed insurgencies, along with her cameraman.

It was partly because of that ordeal that Pelaez and Lazaro, recently married, left the country for New York, says her sister, Elvira Pelaez.

There, she made a name for herself at El Diario La Prensa as a columnist who praised Fidel Castro and was highly critical of U.S. government policy. He went back to school.

The two were very affectionate with one another, said Cesar Medrano, a photographer who knew them from Peru. "A normal couple," he said.