Learn Hardcore Russian: Моя подруга недавно вышла замуж за музыканта. - My female friend recently got married to a musician.

Historically the idea was “a woman goes out behind a husband,” i.e., leaves her family to live with her husband. Over time, it fused into the set phrase выйти замуж, and now people don’t feel the literal meaning; they just understand it as “to get married” (for a woman).

Important points:

It’s only used about women.
It is always used with за + accusative to show whom she married:
выйти замуж за кого? – за музыканта, за инженера, за Ивана.

What is the difference between выйти замуж, жениться, and пожениться?

These are three related but different verbs:

Выйти замуж (за кого?)
- Used only about a woman.
- Focus on the woman’s perspective.
- Example: Моя подруга вышла замуж за музыканта.
Жениться (на ком?)
- Used about a man.
- Focus on the man’s perspective.
- Example: Мой друг женился на музыкантке. – “My (male) friend married a (female) musician.”
Пожениться
- Used about a couple together (plural subject).
- Example: Они недавно поженились. – “They recently got married.”

So, for your sentence, because the subject is a woman (подруга), Russian uses вышла замуж.

Why is it за музыканта and not something like с музыкантом?

The verb phrase выйти замуж requires a specific preposition–case pattern:

выйти замуж за кого? – за + accusative.

So you must say:

за музыканта
за врача
за Ивана

Using с музыкантом would mean “with a musician” and would not mean “marry” in this structure.
For marriage, the standard patterns are:

выйти замуж за кого? (woman marries someone)
жениться на ком? (man marries someone)
пожениться (they marry each other; usually no object)

Why does музыканта end in -а? Isn’t музыкант masculine?

Yes, музыкант is masculine. The form музыканта here is accusative singular, animate.

For masculine animate nouns, the accusative singular looks the same as the genitive singular:

Nominative: музыкант (who? what?)
Genitive: музыканта (of a musician)
Accusative (animate): музыканта (whom?)

After за in this construction (замуж за кого?), we use the accusative, and because it’s a person, the form is музыканта.

Why is it моя подруга, not мою подругу?

Моя подруга is the subject of the sentence, so it must be in the nominative case:

кто? что? – моя подруга (my (female) friend) – nominative

If it were мою подругу, that would be accusative and would normally be an object, for example:

Я видел мою подругу. – “I saw my (female) friend.”

In your sentence, it’s she who did the action (she got married), so:

Моя подруга (subject, nominative)
недавно вышла замуж за музыканта (predicate and complements).

Why is the verb вышла, not вышел or вышли?

In Russian, past-tense verbs agree in gender and number with the subject.

Masculine singular: вышел
Feminine singular: вышла
Neuter singular: вышло
Plural (any gender mix): вышли

Here, the subject подруга is feminine singular, so the verb must be вышла:

Моя подруга вышла замуж.
If the subject were masculine:
Мой друг вышел из дома. – “My friend (male) went out of the house.”
(For marriage you’d say Мой друг женился, not вышел замуж.)

Where can недавно go in the sentence? Is Моя подруга недавно вышла замуж… the only option?

Недавно (“recently”) is relatively flexible in word order. All of these are grammatically OK:

Моя подруга недавно вышла замуж за музыканта.
Моя подруга вышла недавно замуж за музыканта.
Моя подруга вышла замуж недавно за музыканта. (less common)
Недавно моя подруга вышла замуж за музыканта.

Differences:

(1) is the most neutral and natural.
(4) puts extra emphasis on “recently” at the start.
(2) is fine but slightly shifts focus to the act of getting married as the “recent” event.
(3) is possible but sounds a bit marked; speakers prefer (1) or (4).

For learners, (1) and (4) are the best choices.

What exactly does подруга mean? Is it “girlfriend” or just “female friend”?

Подруга means female friend. Context decides whether it’s romantic or not:

моя подруга – usually understood as “my (female) friend”
моя девушка – typically “my girlfriend” (romantic partner)

In your sentence, Моя подруга недавно вышла замуж…, it’s generally understood as “My (female) friend recently got married…”, not “My girlfriend” (unless context clearly says it is romantic).

So:

подруга – female friend
друг – male friend
девушка (about someone’s partner) – girlfriend
парень (about someone’s partner) – boyfriend

What is замуж grammatically? It looks like a noun but doesn’t change.

Замуж is historically from за муж (“behind/for a husband”), but in modern Russian it is treated as an indeclinable adverb-like form used only in the fixed combinations:

выйти замуж (за кого?)
идти замуж (за кого?) (colloquial, about a future marriage)

It:

does not change form (no cases, numbers, genders),
does not appear freely elsewhere in the sentence.

You can’t, for example, say о замуже or с замужем. (There is a related noun замужество – “marriage” as a state, but that’s a different word.)

Why is the verb вышла perfective? Could we say выходила замуж?

Вышла is the perfective past of выходить / выйти. Perfective is used for:

a single, completed action
especially one that changes someone’s state or situation

Getting married is viewed as a single completed event that changed her marital status, so perfective вышла is natural.

Выходила замуж (imperfective past) is possible but has a different nuance:

Она выходила замуж два раза. – “She has been married (went through the process of getting married) twice.”
→ focuses on repeated events or the process, not one fresh event.

So for “She recently got married,” perfective вышла замуж is the normal, correct choice.

Can we omit за музыканта and just say Моя подруга недавно вышла замуж?

Yes. That is perfectly correct:

Моя подруга недавно вышла замуж.
– “My (female) friend recently got married.” (without saying to whom)

Adding за музыканта simply specifies whom she married:

выйти замуж за кого? – answer with за + accusative: за музыканта, за программиста, за Ивана.

So both are fine; one is just more detailed.

What would the sentence look like if we were talking about a male friend getting married?

For a male subject, you generally don’t use выйти замуж. You use жениться:

Мой друг недавно женился на музыкантке.
– “My (male) friend recently married a (female) musician.”

Patterns:

жениться на ком? – на музыкантке, на враче, на Ольге (prepositional case)
The verb is masculine past: женился (not вышел замуж).

If you want a gender-neutral perspective and don’t care which side you’re talking about, use пожениться with a plural subject:

Они недавно поженились. – “They recently got married.”

How is музыканта pronounced and where is the stress?

Музыканта is pronounced:

[му-зы-КАН-та]

Stress is on the third syllable: музыКА́нта (in phonetic notation, музыкáнта).
The stress stays on the same syllable as in the nominative singular музыка́нт.