[2] Cunningham met her future husband, John Randolph, at Stella Adler's acting classes when she moved to New York from South Carolina after graduating summa cum laude from Furman University.
They were married in 1942 in Chicago, where he was working in the national touring production of Native Son, directed and produced by Orson Welles.
Cunningham was hired in 1964 to play Elizabeth 'Aunt Liz' Matthews on the newly created soap opera Another World.
[3] Randolph and Cunningham were original founding members of the Ensemble Studio Theatre in New York City, together with Artistic Director Curt Dempster and actor Jon Voight, between 1968 and 1972.
In 1983 they introduced playwright James G. Richardson's one-act play Eulogy, directed by Heidie Helen Davis.