Yakout was an Armenian from Sivas (Sepastia), Turkey and her name means Ruby in Turkish. She attended a Protestant missionary school in town as a young girl (she always remembered learning "Nearer My God to Thee" there) and married Krikor Setian when she was around 18. Their first three children Aram, Dickran, and Arousiag were born in Sivas, where they lived in the Camii-i Kebir (Big Mosque) neighborhood. Per the 1910 census, she also had two children who died, likely as infants, but nothing is known of them. Yakout's husband was a French professor, but with massacres against Armenians already having occurred, Yakout could see that being an ethnic Armenian in the Ottoman Empire was very precarious. She urged her husband that it would be better to leave, even though it would mean giving up his comfortable position. In 1906 they made a perilous journey on a cattle ship to Egypt, having to stay in the hull with animals. At this time Yakout's three children were all under the age of 9 and her daughter was only a few years old. During the journey the ship hit a storm and all their possessions were washed overboard, including Yakout's favorite mink coat which had been a wedding gift from her father-in-law. The family arrived in Egypt empty handed and were assisted there by Armenian philanthropist Boghos Nubar Pasha to start a new life. Though Krikor had been a professor in Turkey, he only found work as a trolley conductor. Family oral history said they lived in Alexandria, though per a census of 1906-1907 they were residing at that time in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. In January 1907 the Setian family applied for a passport to leave the empire, the petition was made at Sivas so it seems the family might have had to return from Egypt to settle their affairs and leave for good. The passport notes they lived in the Camii-i Kebir neighborhood of Sivas. In July 1908 they took the S.S. Carpathia, which arrived at Ellis Island on July 8, 1908. The manifest says their last residence had indeed been Alexandria, so perhaps they had spent a few months to a year there after getting their passport before sailing to Trieste where they boarded the Carpathia. They went to stay in New Haven, Connecticut with Krikor's brother Armenag and his family. In a tragic coincidence, Armenag's four year old son Haig died on July 11 within days of their arrival. Yakout encouraged a move to Philadelphia, where her brother lived and was a fixture in the small Armenian immigrant community there. Shortly after moving to Philadelphia, their next child Haig was born, likely named after their nephew who had died two years prior. Their youngest child Rose was born in 1914, and the following year the Armenian Genocide reached their hometown of Sivas. Most of Yakout's relatives who had remained there, including siblings and possibly her father, died in the genocide. Though leaving Sivas had caused many hardships, Yakout's decision to leave with her family proved to be a lifesaver. Though they lived in poverty, they successfully made a life for themselves in America with such jobs as running a produce shop. Living near the Philadelphia docks, Krikor would inspect the incoming shipments of fruit, purchasing discounted boxes of fruit which had broken for individual resale, as they could not be sold to stores. Though he never attained anywhere close to the prominence he would have had as a professor in Sivas, in 1915 the Armenian population there was massacred, including three of Yakout's siblings and their families, just as she had feared, meaning the difficult choice to leave likely saved their lives. Around the time of the Great Depression, Krikor moved to Tampa, Florida in hopes of starting up a business. He returned a few years later and marveled at how successfully Yakout had run the home in his absence. Krikor died of cancer in 1939 and Yakout moved to a new home at 927 Marlyn Road in West Philadelphia. She lived to see some of her great-grandchildren before dying of myocarditis at about age 76.