[4]: 6  After meeting her first artist, at age 9, she became convinced she needed her own studio space, which her mother helped set up in the family linen closet.

She began working on greeting cards and her first nationally distributed greeting card featured a malapropism that played off an old saying, "Life is just a bowl of cherries", showing a girl looking at a chair piled high with bowls, with the legend: "Life is just a chair of bowlies.

Mary Engelbreit stores were located in St. Louis; Schaumburg, Illinois; Dallas, Texas; Denver, Colorado; and Alpharetta, Georgia.

[3] As her card line grew in size and popularity, it drew attention from other companies who licensed her artwork on products including calendars, T-shirts, mugs, gift books, rubber stamps, ceramic figurines, and fabric.

[8] Two of her books, Mary Engelbreit's Mother Goose and A Night of Great Joy, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly.