On 19 August 1956, Gary married entertainment industry executive Sidney Sheinberg, with whom she has two sons. She retired from acting after her appearance in the film 1941 (1979). She came out of retirement to reprise her role as Ellen Brody for the second time in Jaws: The Revenge, released in 1987. Her sons, Bill Sheinberg and Jonathan Sheinberg, are both film producers.
A life member of the Actors Studio, Gary began her acting career in the late 1960s doing guest appearances on several popular TV shows. These include Night Gallery, Dragnet 1968, in an episode entitled "The Big Shipment", McCloud, The Marcus-Nelson Murders (the pilot for Kojak), and The F.B.I.. She began her first major acting role when she was a guest star on seven episodes of the TV series Ironside, among them "Tom Dayton Is Loose Among Us", in which she played the substitute librarian Miss Kirk, who pushes the unstable Tom Dayton too hard, and "In Search of an Artist", as a woman with a drinking Problem who may have been involved in a murder.
In 1995, together with her husband, Gary received the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Humanitarian Award.
