In 1972, MacGraw was voted the top female box office star in the world[2] and was honored with a hands and footprints ceremony at Grauman's Chinese Theatre after having made just three films.

[1] Beginning in 1960, MacGraw spent six years working at Harper's Bazaar magazine as a photographic assistant to fashion maven Diana Vreeland.

[citation needed] MacGraw began her acting career in television commercials, including one for the Polaroid Swinger camera.

MacGraw gained widespread attention with Goodbye, Columbus (1969), her first leading role, but real stardom came when she starred opposite Ryan O'Neal in Love Story (1970), one of the highest-grossing films in U.S.

Having taken a five-year break from acting, in 1978 MacGraw re-emerged in another box office hit, Convoy (1978), opposite Kris Kristofferson.

In 1985, MacGraw joined hit ABC prime-time soap opera Dynasty as Lady Ashley Mitchell, which, she admitted in a 2011 interview, she did for the money.

In February 2021, MacGraw and O'Neal were honored with stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, 50 years after the release of Love Story.

[12] MacGraw made her Broadway theater debut in New York City in 2006 as a dysfunctional matriarch in the drama Festen (The Celebration).

The impact of this bestselling video was such that in June 2007, Vanity Fair magazine credited MacGraw with being one of the people responsible for the practice's recent popularity in the United States.

In July 2006, MacGraw filmed a public service announcement for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), urging residents to take their pets with them in the event of wildfires.

[16] In 2008, she wrote the foreword to the book Pawprints of Katrina[17] by author Cathy Scott and photography by Clay Myers about Best Friends Animal Society and the largest pet rescue in U.S.

[20] While in college, MacGraw met German Canadian Robert "Robin" Martin Hoen, a Harvard-educated banker, and the couple married on October 29, 1960.

She dated Warren Beatty, Rick Danko, Bill Hudson, Ronald Meyer, Rod Stryker, Fran Tarkenton, Peter Weller, Henry Wolf and Mickey Raphael.

[28][29] After Evans' 2019 death, MacGraw told The Hollywood Reporter, "Our son, Joshua, and I will miss Bob tremendously, and we are so very proud of his enormous contribution to the film industry.