The daughter of Hungarian immigrants, Kober was born in Yorkville, a neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper East Side. She attended Hunter College High School, and in the summer of 1924, she placed third in a New York City scholarship contest. The $100-a-year prize helped her to attend Hunter College,[2] where she majored in Latin, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and graduated magna cum laude.[3] She earned a master's degree in classics at Columbia University in 1929 and a PhD in 1932.[4]