[6] Her family was involved with the leadership at Northern Neck Industrial Academy;[7][8] and they later moved to Lynchburg and finally to Greensboro, North Carolina, where her father was the pastor of the Providence Baptist Church for 26 years.

[6] She then studied voice at the Juilliard School in New York City[11] and received a master's degree in music education from Columbia University in 1944.

[4] Tynes was one of a group of artists to appear at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959, assembled by Ed Sullivan and sponsored by the US State Department.

[12] and was the first American singer to perform at the Budapest Opera after World War II[15] The Philadelphia Museum of Art has a photograph of her taken by Carl Van Vechten in their collection.

[5][11] Margaret Tynes married Hans von Klier (1934-2000), an industrial designer of Czech German aristocratic descent.