Martha Cumming has never given an interview about her own life. That hasn’t stopped dozens of celebrity websites from stating, as settled fact, exactly which nonprofit she used to run. She’s the wife of actor Peter MacNicol, married since October 1986, and beyond that fact, she has confirmed almost nothing about herself. Most of what’s written gets repeated from one site to the next instead of checked. Some of it holds up. A key piece of it doesn’t.
Table of Contents
Quick Facts
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full name | Martha Sue Cumming, also known as Marsue |
| Married to | Peter MacNicol, since October 11, 1986 |
| Documented role | Supports the Corie Williams Scholarship Fund |
| Public appearances on record | Three |
| Children | Most records say none |
How She Met Peter MacNicol
MacNicol told People magazine in 1989 that they met on a blind date built around a game of Password, and that she got him to say the word “pneumatic” during it. That’s the story he’s told about how he knew. They married on October 11, 1986. Beyond that account, neither of them has said much publicly about the relationship.
The Scholarship Fund, and the Mother Who Actually Built It
Corie Williams was seventeen and a senior at Centennial High School in Compton when she was shot on January 16, 1997, riding an MTA bus home from school. The bullet came from a fight between two gang members aiming at each other. She wasn’t the target. UPI covered her death at the time, and Los Angeles County posted a $12,500 reward for information leading to an arrest.
Corie’s mother, Loretta Thomas-Davis, built a scholarship fund in her daughter’s name that same year. It still runs today through the California Community Foundation, sending first-generation, low-income students from South Los Angeles to college. Bill Cosby offered financial support not long after the fund started, since his own son Ennis had been killed in an unrelated attack on the same day Corie died.
Cumming supports the fund and has helped manage it, according to TV Guide’s own profile of MacNicol. Neither that profile nor any other credits her with starting it. She didn’t. The fund exists because Loretta Thomas-Davis built it after her daughter’s death. Her name was the hardest part of this story to find.
The Theater Director Claim That Doesn’t Hold Up
A different claim shows up almost everywhere Cumming is mentioned online: that she once served as Executive Director of the 52nd Street Project, a theater and mentoring program for kids in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen. That claim doesn’t survive a records check.
The 52nd Street Project has run since 1981. Like any nonprofit, it has to file a Form 990 with the IRS every year, naming its officers and directors, and those filings are public record.
Every filing available, going back to 2011, names Carol Ochs as Executive Director. Cumming’s name isn’t in any of them. A 2006 magazine profile already described Ochs in that role, and an archived version of the organization’s own staff page later marked her thirtieth year there, putting her start somewhere around the early 1990s.
If Cumming held a position at the Project, it would have to predate that, most likely sometime in the 1980s, before the group had grown into the kind of nonprofit that keeps this sort of paperwork. Nothing public confirms that either way. What’s clear is that a claim stated as flat fact across dozens of pages isn’t backed by the one document built to settle it.
Three Public Appearances in Nearly Four Decades
Cumming’s public footprint comes down to a handful of moments other people happened to photograph.
- August 28, 1999: She and MacNicol attended the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards in Pasadena, in the same awards season as his first Ally McBeal nomination.
- The early 2000s: A photo shows the couple boarding a military aircraft for a USO holiday tour, taken not long after MacNicol’s 2001 Emmy win.
- September 15, 2019: They appeared together again at the Creative Arts Emmys, this time in Los Angeles, photographed independently by two different wire services.
That’s the full public record. She has never given a red carpet interview or had a magazine profile of her own, and there’s no social media account anywhere under her name.
Does She Have Children?
Records disagree slightly here. IMDb and CSFD, a Czech film database, both list no children for the couple. The Movie Database says two, but that entry sits next to an unrelated factual error and doesn’t match anything else on the public record. No source, anywhere, names an actual child.
What Forty Years of Silence Actually Built
Cumming has never spoken publicly. That’s most of the reason so little is confirmed about her. In the gap it left, an inaccurate claim about her old career got repeated often enough to start looking true. That’s how a made-up title outlasted a real one, and how a mother’s actual work quietly ended up credited to somebody else’s name instead.
MacNicol is still working as of mid-2026, recently appearing in Hulu’s “All’s Fair,” and there’s no public sign of any change in the marriage. Cumming has said nothing about any of it. She never really has.
Common Questions About Martha Cumming
Who is Martha Cumming married to?
Actor Peter MacNicol, known for “Ally McBeal,” “Ghostbusters II,” and “Veep.” They’ve been married since October 1986.
Was she the Executive Director of the 52nd Street Project?
That claim circulates widely, but the nonprofit’s own federal filings don’t support it. Carol Ochs has held that title in every filing on public record since 2011.
What is the Corie Williams Scholarship Fund?
A scholarship fund through the California Community Foundation, created in memory of a Los Angeles teenager killed in 1997. It helps first-generation, low-income students get to college. Cumming supports it. Corie’s mother, Loretta Thomas-Davis, built it.
Does she have children with Peter MacNicol?
Most available records say no. One database says two, but it doesn’t match the rest of the record.
