 Irina Moiseeva and Andrei Minenkov met at the rink when they were six years old and began skating together in 1967.They had their breakthrough during the 1974–1975 season.They were third at the Soviet Championships, behind Lyudmila Pakhomova/Aleksandr Gorshkov and Natalia Linichuk/Gennadi Karponosov, and placed just off the podium at the 1975 European Championships.