Her father was a mechanical engineer at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and earned a good salary which enabled Arroyo's mother to stay at home with their children.

Arroyo's other musical experiences as a child were largely through singing in the choirs at her Baptist church and as a student at Hunter College High School.

On the advice of her mother, she became an English teacher at Bronx High School in the Fall of 1956 but found it difficult to balance her teaching responsibilities with continued training under Gurewich.

Arroyo found the work fulfilling and stated of the experience, "My life had been centered on music for so long, and suddenly there I was, deeply involved in other people's problems,".

She left NYU and entered the Kathryn Long School in the Fall of 1957 where she studied singing, drama, German, English diction, and fencing.

While at the school, she was offered the role of the first coryphée in the American premiere of Ildebrando Pizzetti's Murder in the Cathedral to be performed at a festival in upstate New York.

The New York Times said of her performance, "Martina Arroyo is a gifted soprano who appears to have remarkable potential, and she sang with a voice of amplitude and lovely color.

"[3][2][4] In February 1959 Arroyo sang the title role in Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride in a concert version with the Little Orchestra Society at Town Hall.

During 1961 and 1962 she went back and forth between Europe and the Metropolitan Opera frequently, with her roles at the Met during this period being in Wagner's Ring cycle and in reprises of Don Carlo.

[3][2][4] Verdi's Aida became an important role for Arroyo early in her career, serving as a calling card for her at many major opera houses during the 1960s.

Rudolf Bing, the Met's director, immediately offered her a contract to join the roster of the company's principal sopranos which extended for several years.

[3][2][4] In 1964 Arroyo broke new ground outside the traditional opera house by making an appearance on national network television in the production of Feliz Borinquen for the CBS Repertoire Workshop under the musical direction of Alfredo Antonini.

In 1968 she sang for the first time in Israel and made her first appearance in the United Kingdom as Valentine in a London concert performance of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots.

She returned to both companies a number of times during the 1970s as Verdi heroines and in parts like the title roles in Puccini's Tosca and Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos.

She remained very busy in the world's major opera houses through 1979 singing mostly Verdi, Puccini, and Strauss heroines and other roles from the lirico-spinto repertoire.

Arroyo portrayed herself in an episode of The Odd Couple titled "Your Mother Wears Army Boots", which originally aired on January 16, 1975.

She came out of retirement in 1991 for one last performance in the world premiere of Leslie Adams's Blake, an opera whose story is set in pre-Civil War America when slavery was still a reality.

She performed often with the New York Philharmonic under conductor Leonard Bernstein who particularly admired her voice in such repertoire as Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Missa solemnis.

[3][2][4] She has given master classes nationally and internationally, and judged several competitions including the George London Competition and the Tchaikovsky International Competition./With Willard L. Boyd, former President of the University of Iowa, she co-authored the "Task Force Report on Music Education in the U.S."[3][2][4] In 1976, she was appointed by President Gerald Ford to the National Council of the Arts in Washington, D.C. She founded the Martina Arroyo Foundation,[7] which is dedicated to the development of emerging young opera singers by immersing them in complete role preparation courses.