So here's the lo-down.
Katharina (Katherine) Luther was born to a family of nobles who lost their fortune over the years because let's face it old money is just old and life takes just as much old money to live on as the new stuff and well, it ran out. The name pasted on young Katie when she was born was Katharina von Bora. Her father (Hans) and mother (Anna) had other children but we don't really know how many. So here is little Katie with her siblings growing up in some ancient family house in Germany and when she is five, you know playing dress-up and learning through observation just what it takes to care for a house, her mother dies and everything changes, as would happen in any five year old girl's life. Soon after the event, her father remarried and sent little Katie off to school and just a few years later to a convent where she would learn the religious life which at that time was, for women, found in a convent because, shall I remind you, the Reformation hadn't occurred yet. So her aunt Magadalene ("Lena") was there to teach her what every little nun should know and there she was to take it all in and on October 8, 1515, at the age of sixteen, she took her vows as a nun. (A big commitment for a sixteen year old but hey, they all matured faster back then right,? No TV to suck up their intelligence.)
Okay so Katie the nun is reading, writing, learning some Latin when this whole Reformation thing is being strongly held not so very far away in Wittenberg, Germany under the leadership of none other than Martin Luther, himself. So, like a true woman she talks these things over with her friends in the convent and some of them decide that "Hey, we're trapped in this place under the unbiblical rule of some tax-collector in Rome and they'll kill us if we leave." So they penned a letter to Luther for help in their escape. The gracious and understanding ex-priest arranged for the ladies to escape in the covered fish cart of a merchant in his flock who regularly delivered his catch to the convent on the day before Easter, 1523. Eventually all the other Dames that escaped with Katie married and began family life with men from Luther's congregation but Katie's standards were high and after a few suitors she told a friend that she would only consider marriage to him (Nikolaus von Amsdorf) or their common friend, Dr. Luther himself. Well, we know how that turned out. Martin and Katie married on June 13, 1525 and held a public ceremony on the 27th of that same month.
Katie, then twenty-six, became a very busy woman. Luther always had students in their home and many of them stayed a while before moving on to other quarters. So you've got college guys in and out of the house, visitors to her famous husband, and eventually six children of their own. Busy woman! And what a household to manage! The son of the nobleman who protected Luther throughout his confrontive years with the Catholic Church, Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, had given "The Black Cloister", a former 
Augustinian monastery in Wittenberg, to the Luthers as a wedding gift. So when the flu happen to sweep the area, guess who's house served as hospital.
After twenty-one years of ministering along-side her husband, the famed Pastor and Professor of Wittenberg died and Katie was asked to move to more manageable quarters with the children who were still living at home. She refused at first but soon war drove many of the area's people to other lands. She returned home only to be driven away twice more because of war and plague. It was during this last fleeing that her cart was in a accident near the city gates of Torgau where she died on December 20, 1552, three months later from serious injuries related to the accident. She was laid to rest there at Saint Mary's Church, far from Wittenberg. But burial plots weren't on her mind when the time came to depart. She is reported to have said on her deathbed, "I will stick to Christ as a burr to cloth."
The four children of the Luthers who survived to adulthood became movers and shakers in the world as well. Hans became a court advisor, Martin Jr. studied theology, Paul (through whom the male Luther line continued until 1759) became a medical doctor, Margareta married a wealthy nobleman and their descendants can be traced to present day (including the 2nd president of Germany and Counts and Princes of Eulenburg)
Martin Luther was of course the more fore-front character in their family but it is said that Katie had wit and personality of her own. Really, can you imagine a soft-spoken, un-intelligent wife for Martin Luther who stood before men who by all conventional rights of the time could have killed him and said "Unless I shall be convinced by the testimonies of the Scriptures or by clear reason ... I neither can nor will make any retraction, since it is neither safe nor honourable to act against conscience."
We again don't know much about her character or marriage to Luther but there are hints of his affection among his letters to friends and his sermons. He fondly called her "my lord Katie" and stated in a letter "Catharina, my dear rib ... is, thanks to God..." We can know that she is the woman intended for a great man by and infinitely greater God. She was his match and equal in all things, just as God seen fit to provide.
A picture from the movie mentioned above but the ages would have been further than is represented here. She was twenty-six while Martin Luther was forty-two at the time.
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