Born Alexandra Elizabeth Braid in Charleston, South Carolina, she attended the elite Ashley Hall and received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1955 with a major in Russian. She was thrice wed; from 1958–1963 to Leonard Ripley, an early partner and recording Engineer at Elektra Records, from 1971–1981 to Thomas Martin Garlock (1929–2008), and in 1981 to John Vincent Graham (1926–2007), a former professor at the University of Virginia, from whom she was legally separated at the time of her death.