Kövess' father was a senior military officer living in Temesvár, Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire (now Timișoara, Romania).

[4] He married the Baroness Eugenie Hye von Glunek in 1892 and they had 3 sons; Adalbert, who was killed in action in 1914 and Géza and Jenő who served as artillery officers.

He led his first military expedition in 1882 on a mission to suppress a mutiny in Dalmatia and was commended by the Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria with a Merit Medal and also received a Knights Cross of the Order of the Italian Crown that same year.

He had become one of the youngest colonels in the Austro-Hungarian Army and one of the most powerful Protestants serving in a generally Roman Catholic officer corps.

The condemnation led him to believe he would be prematurely retired; however, this turned out to be false due to the onset of World War I.

In the summer of 1917, Kövess sallied from the mountains with his troops, made himself master of Czernowitz and Radautz, and drove the Russians almost entirely from the Bukovina.

Entrusted after the withdrawal of Bulgaria with the thankless task of the command of the troops in the Balkans, Kövess could do nothing more than arrange for the evacuation of the occupied territories according to plan, and for the defence of the Danube-Sava line.