Roberta Wright and her identical twin sister, Rowena Fay (died August 6, 2011), were born in Muskogee, Oklahoma, on February 7, 1912.

[2] On January 21, 1933, Wright eloped in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, with John S. McCain Jr., a U.S. naval ensign who would later become a four-star Admiral.

For example, during Christmas 1971, she traveled to Saigon and presented $1,000 ($7,764 today) and 14 boxes of clothing to the Vietnam Advisory Board of Operation Helping Hand on behalf of the Pearl Harbor area Navy Wives Clubs.

On November 1, 1967, Roberta McCain wrote to President Lyndon B. Johnson, expressing her support of his policies in Vietnam as a "parent of a son who was shot down in Hanoi, last week, and is now a prisoner-of-war ..."[15] In June 1968, Roberta McCain told Parade magazine, "Religion has been of great importance to us in our concern for Johnny, religion and the military tradition of my husband's family.

When notified upon his release on March 15, 1973, that he had shouted expletives at his captors, Roberta McCain's response was, "Johnny, I'm going to come over there and wash your mouth out with soap.

[21] In November 2007, her comments during an MSNBC interview about Mitt Romney, his role in organizing the 2002 Winter Olympics, and his Mormonism generated minor political controversy and forced her son to respond to clarify her remarks.

[26] McCain's comments about Rush Limbaugh and Keith Olbermann created a stir with politicos on both sides even after her son's failed presidential bid.

[27][28] McCain's life of traveling with family, specifically her twin sister, was noted by Maureen Orth in The New York Times in December 2007.

[31] McCain's centenary was noted in a number of periodicals in the United States,[32] including an article by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Ken Herman.

[34] In September 2013, television commentator Greta Van Susteren wrote about McCain in an essay that was featured by Politico during their "Women Rule" series.

[42] At the time of her death, her son Joe was the only one of her children still living; her daughter Jean McCain Morgan had died of mesothelioma the previous November, aged 85.