She was the sister of writer Frigyes Karinthy and the wife of the painter Viktor Erdei.

Daughter of József Ernő Karinthi and Karolina Szeréna Engel, a bourgeois family in Budapest.

Her family was originally Jewish, but converted to Lutheranism shortly before her brother Frigyes was born (1887).

Young Etelka played piano and wrote poems in childhood,[2] before studying at the free school in Nagybánya artists' colony between 1906 and 1912.

On 14 June 1908 Viktor Erdei married non-denominational Ada in Budapest.