Zalyan-Manukyan was a nurse and worked at orphanages. She married Aram Manukyan in 1917 had a daughter named Seda the following year. Manukyan was one of the founders of the First Republic of Armenia and became its first Minister of Internal Affairs in 1918. In the same year Katarine coordinated nursing volunteers at the Battle of Abaran and Sardarabad. Her husband died in January 1919 after contracting typhus.