Sadie Winkler Horwitz was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on 26 May 1884. She was the daughter of German-speaking Austro-Hungarian Jewish migrants Samuel Horwitz, a metal refiner, and his wife Bertha, née Winkler. She had two brothers and one sister, all born in Ohio. 

By 1910 Sadie was a resident of Forrest Avenue in Cincinnati and resided with her widowed mother and her three siblings. 

She was travelling aboard the Carpathia as a first-class passenger with her maternal cousin Helen Winkler when that ship rescued the survivors of the Titanic disaster; she had been intending to spend a six-month-long vacation in Europe. 

In later years Sadie was married to John Braude (b. circa 1879), a German-born jeweller; making their home in Manhattan, they had two sons, Arthur and John.

Sadie Braude, née Horwitz, died in New York on 12 November 1941.