 Yevtyukhin was born in 1964 in Yoshkar-Ola, in the Mari ASSR, to Nikolai Vasiliyevich Yevtyukhin and Lidia Ivanovna Yevtyukhina.His father worked as an officer with a military manufacturer, and his mother also worked in manufacturing organisations.He was born exactly nine months after his parents' wedding, and was named after his great-grandfather, who was a Kuban Cossack, and was the first of the couple's two children.