Webb-Gardner was active in cultural and civic endeavors and was a member of the American Red Cross, the Woman's Missionary Union, the North Carolina Symphony Society, the National Civic League, and the League of Women Voters, as well as Chairwoman of the North Carolina State Advisory Board of Paroles.

Afterward, Webb spent two years traveling in Europe before marrying lawyer Oliver Max Gardner, her distant cousin, on November 6, 1907.

[1][7] Webb-Gardner was a prominent political and society hostess throughout her husband's political and legal career in North Carolina, where he worked as a lawyer and served as a state legislator, lieutenant governor, and governor; and in Washington, D.C., where he served as Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion and as United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury.

[1] Her involvement with Gardner-Webb University began when she and her husband provided financial assistance to the Boiling Springs Junior College, a small Christian educational institution which was facing financing challenges in the 1930s and early 1940s.

[10] Webb-Gardner was an amateur genealogist and collected research and primary documents dating back to the early 1800s pertaining to the Webb, Andrews, Love, and Gardner families of Cleveland and Rutherford counties in North Carolina.

[1][3] The Gardners had four children: Margaret Love, James, Ralph, and Oliver Max, Jr.[1][2] They lived at Webbley, the family's estate in Shelby.

[8] After her husband's death, shortly after he had been appointed as the Ambassador of the United States to the Court of St James, she retired to Webbley to live with her sister, Madge Webb Riley.

Dr. June Hobbs,[15] director of undergraduate research at Gardner-Webb was named the Fay Webb-Gardner Chair of Student Success in 2018.