She was noted as one of the first women inducted into Harley-Davidson’s 100,000 Mile Club, was named Most Outstanding Female Motorcyclist in 1978 and worked as an activist for motorcycle rights.

[1] By many accounts, including her mother's, Gloria was the smartest, most interesting,[2] most attractive, most outgoing, and most talented of the Carter children.

As children competing for the affections of their parents, the relationship between Spann and the future president was somewhat strained, but the two grew extremely close in their later years.

Carter graduated from high school in June 1944 and enrolled in Georgia Southwestern College, where she began to study journalism.

The Carters disapproved of the match, as the groom was a former drugstore clerk, not a suitable job for well-to-do families at the time.

On December 15, 1950, she married Walter Guy Spann (1925–2012),[4] a farmer from Webster County, Georgia, and he adopted the son of her first marriage.

William Carter Spann moved to California in 1969, and Gloria cited his troubled life as the main factor that turned her back toward her faith.

Gloria also received a phone call threatening to reveal that "Jimmy Carter's got a nephew in jail" if she did not pay a sum of money to keep the caller quiet.

[10] In 1979, Spann was herself arrested for disorderly conduct when she refused to stop playing a harmonica in a McWaffle restaurant in Americus, Georgia.

[11] Spann was one of the first women inducted into Harley Davidson’s 100,000 Mile Club, was named Most Outstanding Female Motorcyclist in 1978, and worked as an activist for motorcycle rights.