When she became an adult, her mother introduced her to a series of eligible young men, but she insisted on Nhu. He was fourteen years older and referred to her as "little niece" in accordance with Vietnamese custom. In accordance with Vietnamese tradition, they were married three years after being betrothed in 1940. In May 1943, aged 18, she married Nhu, and converted from Mahayana Buddhism to Roman Catholicism, her husband's religion. Madame Nhu later admitted she married Nhu as a way of getting away from her family, saying "I never had a sweeping love. I read about such things in books, but I do not believe that they really existed. Or perhaps only for a very few people". After an uprising by the Viet Minh in August 1945, her brother-in-law, Ngô Đình Khôi, the eldest of the Ngô brothers, was buried alive, and Nhu and another brother, Ngô Đình Cẩn, were forced to flee.