Colton was born in Charlotte, North Carolina and was educated at Saint Mary's Junior College in Raleigh.

[3] In 1943, she graduated from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in Romance languages.

During World War II, Watters served a code-breaker for the United States Army Signal Corps at Arlington Hall.

After her husband, an Asheville City Councilman, declined to run for state office, Marie Colton campaigned and won the seat.

During her sixteen years of service, Colton focused on such issues as conservation and environmentalism, billboards, alternative medicine, tax reform, historic preservation, tourism and economic development in western North Carolina, child welfare protection, domestic violence laws, legislative ethics reform, and allowing local school boards to ban corporal punishment.