Sen. Diokno was married to Carmen Reyes ""Nena"" Icasiano-Diokno, with whom he had ten (10) children: Carmen Leonor or "Mench", who was college valedictorian and joined the garment industry with husband Emil Ecsay; Jose Ramon or "Popoy", who joined the Lopez family that established the ABS-CBN media corporation; Maria de la Paz or "Pat", who joined a banking company called "ComBank"; Maria Serena or "Maris", who is a nationally recognized historian; Maria Teresa or "Maitep", who is a UP cum laude graduate of Economics and was executive director of a non-profit institution called "IBON" Foundation; Maria Socorro or "Cookie", who worked for the Regional Council of Human Rights in Asia and assisted her father at FLAG; Jose Miguel or "Mike", who is a US-based lawyer; Jose Manuel or "Chel", who is a professor and lawyer; Maria Victoria or "Maya", who was her father's secretary at CHR; and Martin Jose, who is a professional architect from UST and was adopted by the Diokno family in 1967 when he was just two weeks old. His children all excelled in their studies, but Diokno would often chide his children about their lack of perfect scores, to which "Maris" would reply that studying in schools like the colonial, American-founded UP (which is the official public national university and where Sen. Diokno wished to enroll in but was banned by his politically-moderate parents) made very good scores the equivalent to perfect scores at DLSU, a private, sectarian Catholic university.