Her father was an Ohio State Supreme Court judge, and her brother (also named Nicholas Longworth) was a congressman from Ohio for three decades, eventually becoming Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1925-31.

Through her son's marriage to the daughter of the Premier of France, the Countess was able to keep the American Library in Paris open even after France's declaration of war in September 1939, organized an administrative set-up which made it possible to keep it independent after the U.S. entered the war.

Aldebert was the French Military attaché in Washington, D.C. at one time, before serving as an artillery officer in World War I.

He is reputed to have written his wife about the pleasure he had in shelling his own château, near Saint-Mihiel, with artillery as part of a six-week siege because it was occupied by German forces, though this later turned out to be a hoax.

[4][5] Together, they were the parents of two children: In the fall of 1935, the countess rented her apartment at 58 rue de Vaugirard, at the corner of the Luxembourg Garden to the young poet Elizabeth Bishop, where Bishop wrote "Cirque d'Hiver", her first poem to be published in The New Yorker, and "Paris, 7 AM".