[1] At age 18, she met her future husband, Franjo Tuđman, in Čazma where he was in charge of a department of the 10th Zagreb Corps of the Yugoslav Partisans.

In 1960, her husband was promoted to the rank of major general, but decided to leave the military in 1961, with the whole family moving back to Zagreb.

On 22 December, the Croatian Parliament officially adopted a new constitution and the following year a series of further political changes led to the gradual independence of Croatia from SFR Yugoslavia.

As a result, on 8 October 1991, at a secret meeting in the basement of the INA building in Šubićeva Street, all remaining legal ties with Yugoslavia were severed by Parliament.

[1] Following the death of her husband on December 10, 1999, she and her family were often publicly criticized, especially by Tuđman's successor in the post of president, Stjepan Mesić.

Lepej became the first prominent whistleblower in modern Croatian history, but got fired from the bank just 11 months before retirement and arrested as a result of exposing this account.

Lepej and her husband, also a victim of corrupt privatization in Croatia, were forced to sell their apartment in order to survive.