[3][4] Her WSA swimming coach Louis de B. Handley, a former Olympic Gold mdalist, called Wainwright the world's fastest swimmer.

[7] Shortly after the 1924 Olympics, she performed in swimming-and-diving shows at the New York Hippodrome along with fellow U.S. Olympians and WSA colleagues Aileen Riggin and Gertrude Ederle.

[2][5] Wainwright very nearly became the first woman to swim the English Channel in 1925; she was selected by the WSA to make the attempt but was forced to pull out due to an injury to her leg caused while stepping off a New York trolley, so her teammate Gertrude Ederle was chosen to take her place.

[2][8][9] While headlining a 1927 vaudeville performance in Dallas, Texas, though engaged to Ben Owen, she briefly married George Leonard Holland, an accompanying organist, Long Island resident and former athlete at the University of Pennsylvania.

[2] At 26, she married a career military man, Lt. Howard Cree Stelling of the 22nd Observation Squadron on February 1, 1933, in Shreveport, Caddo, Louisiana, United States, three miles from Bossier City.

The wedding coincided with the dedication of the newly established Barksdale Field, a new U.S. Army Air Corps Aviation Center in Bossier City, nearly adjacent to Shreveport.