Her younger brother was Borut Žerjav (1916–1977), a journalist in Trieste and Paris after the Second World War.
Because her father, a politician, was preventively arrested and imprisoned during World War I in Ljubljana Castle and in Graz by the Austro-Hungarian authorities for his "notorious pro-Serbian attitudes", she lived for some time with her grandparents.
Even after their divorce in 1979, she remained on friendly terms with Carlo Abarth, and after his death she continued to admire him greatly.
She left Turin in November 1999 because of ill health and moved in with her nephew’s family in Ljubljana, where she died on September 16, 2000.
She was buried five days later at her family's gravesite, a protected monument in Žale Cemetery in Ljubljana.