Two personal changes in von Braun were afoot. The first was that he joined an Evangelical Christian church and became “born again,” something he rarely discussed in public. The second was that he decided to marry his first cousin, Maria von Quistorp, the daughter of his mother’s brother, Alexander von Quistorp. Von Braun was nearly twice her age—she had just turned eighteen in the summer of 1946—and she lived in Germany. From Texas, von Braun began making plans to bring his future bride to the United States.
