Born in Middletown, Connecticut, she married Wilson's Secretary of the Treasury William Gibbs McAdoo at the White House on May 7, 1914. They had a daughter Ellen Wilson McAdoo (1915-1946) and a second daughter, Mary Faith McAdoo (1920-1988). She divorced McAdoo in 1934.

Because she had written a biography about her father, she served as an informal counselor on the 1944 biopic Wilson. In 1965, she became largely incapacitated after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. McAdoo died at her home in Montecito, California at 77, and was interred at the Santa Barbara Cemetery, Santa Barbara, California.