In 1924, Anna Chrzanowska's married her professor, Jerzy Kowalski, classical philologist at the University of Lviv, who was 10 years older than her.

After the outbreak of the World War II, the Kowalski family remained in Soviet Lviv: Jerzy continued lecturing at the university, Anna was a witness of political repressions (her brother was imprisoned, and her sister-in-law was deported to Siberia by Russians).

A room in the house at Linde Street was rented by Czesław Hernas, then a student of Polish studies and a close friend of Kowalska and Maria Dąbrowska.

In 1954, Anna Kowalska moved to Warsaw and lived together with her daughter and Maria Dąbrowska (in a spacious apartment in a pre-war tenement house at Aleja Niepodległości).

Living together in Warsaw, however, Kowalska felt (which she reports in the diary) the tear between her daughter Tulcia and Dąbrowska, who disliked each other.

After Dąbrowska's death in 1965, Kowalska felt humiliated by her friend's will (in which she was omitted), before a later version was found, which included her and made her responsible for the legacy of writing.

She was considered a brilliant conversation partner, (Maria Dąbrowska mentioned her "impressive intellectuality"[5]) and a tolerant and open-minded person.