Eva Wilma Riefle was the daughter of Otto Riefle, a German metalworker born in Pforzheim , near Stuttgart , in southern Germany. Otto Riefle came to Brazil in 1929, aged 19, to work at a Rio de Janeiro metalworking company, Levy-Frank. A year later he was transferred to São Paulo by the same company. At the 1933 carnival there, Otto met Luiza Carp, a Jewish Buenos Aires woman of Russian descent, whom he would marry. Luiza was already pregnant with their daughter, Eva.Eva Wilma had a daughter and a son with her first husband, John Herbert (né John Herbert Buckup) : Vivien (b. 1956) and John Jr. (b. 1958). Vivien is a cinema director, and John Jr. is a musician. She had five grandchildren: Miguel (b. 1986) and Mateus (b. 1990) -- Vivien's sons, and Gabriela (b. 1987), Francisco (b. 2000), and Vitorio (b. 2006) -- John Jr.'s children.