[3] Thomas married Tom Koumalats and spent several years travelling while he served in the United States Army.
[1][2] Both husband and wife became teachers, and for the next fifteen years Thomas taught family living at Amarillo High School.
[1][4][5] In 1984, worried that teacher salaries would be insufficient to save for her children's college education, Thomas began writing.
It won a Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice Award for Best Western Romance and was designated a National Press Women Novel of the Year.
Her third win, for The Texan's Reward, led to her immediate induction into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame.
[2] Although most of her novels are historical or contemporary romances, with Widows of Wichita County Thomas branched into mainstream women's fiction.