[4] Szekeres grew up in the countryside of Fairfield County, where she developed a love of nature and began drawing in pencil at a very young age.
[1] Encouraged by her father, who had heard advertising was a remunerative career, Szekeres studied art at the Pratt Institute between 1951 and 1954, earning a certificate in 1954.
Following graduation, she worked various odd jobs, painting and dressing mechanical mannequins for window displays, assisting an art director at True Confessions magazine, and illustrating children's fashion for Saks Fifth Avenue.
[2] Szekeres married Pratt classmate Gennaro "Jerry" Prozzo (1929–2006), a painter and etcher to whom dePaola had introduced her, on September 20, 1958.
[7] Starting in 2000, Szekeres has written and illustrated a series of preschool concept books featuring a very young mouse named Toby.