According to film historian
Scott MacQueen, Mary was engaged in the late 1920s
to
Paul Kohner, an associate of the Laemmle "crew" and later assistant
producer of such Philbin movies as
L'homme qui rit (1928). Mary broke off the
engagement at the request of her parents, as she was Irish Catholic and
Kohner was a Czech Jew. While he went on to enjoy a successful marriage
and career as a Hollywood agent, Mary was out of pictures within a few
years. Sadly, she never married and spent much of her life looking
after her parents, living with them in a house on Fairfax Avenue in
Hollywood that Mary had bought with her film earnings. However, they
never forgot each other. Shortly after Paul's death in 1988, workers
cleaning out his office at his agency found Mary's love letters close
at hand in his desk, more than 60 years later. Similarly, Philbin
sobbed at the news of Kohner's death in a 1989 interview.