Outraged, Katerina’s parents sent her to live with her mother’s sister, Sophia, in Athens, while Salvatore embarked on an indefinite sea voyage. However, only two months after her relocation, Katerina returned to Thessaloniki gravely ill. She was hospitalized with tuberculosis but miraculously recovered. Her father, fearing for her life, consented to her marriage with Salvatore. Overjoyed, Katerina wrote to Salvatore, asking him to return for their engagement.

By 1885, the newlyweds celebrated the birth of their first child, Ioannis-Moshe, and began planning their new home in the city center to accommodate Katerina’s needs while Salvatore traveled. However, the 1890 fire forced a change in plans, and the family moved permanently to the Exoches district. Architect Paionidis designed their villa, completed in early 1891. Two more children, twins Rebecca and Benjamin, joined the family, but tragedy struck when Salvatore’s final voyage ended in disaster. His ship, the Dunraven, struck a reef and sank, claiming 26 lives, including Salvatore’s.

Widowed, Katerina devoted herself to raising her three children. Without financial support from her late husband’s family and with her father’s business sold, she found work at the Practical Girls’ School (Villa Asiz Kapandzi, now Vasilissis Olgas Street, No. 129).

In the years that followed, Katerina remarried widower and businessman Petros Haitopoulos, securing her family’s future. She continued working closely with Aglaia Schina, becoming her trusted assistant when Schina became director of the Girls’ School in 1910. During the 1917 fire, Katerina’s family home was destroyed, and she retired at the age of 54.

As her children pursued studies abroad, Katerina and Haitopoulos settled in an apartment on Bizaniou Street, part of the “Arigoni Apartments,” a three-story building designed by architect Pietro Arrigoni.