McGrory (Mary) is born in Boston.

Mary McGrory graduates from Girls Latin School and Emmanuel College, and begins her career in journalism as a book reviewer in 1947, first at the Boston Herald, then at the Washington Star. She is then assigned to cover the White House, and becomes the leading woman journalist of the era, winning a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the Watergate hearings in 1975. After the Star folds, McGrory goes to work for the Washington Post in 1981. She dies in Washington, D.C., on April 21, 2004.