Spoiler : Marcus, Mary (birth name was Marie Eleanor Doherty) Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts 5/25/1914; died 10/10/2003 in Hyannis, Massachu- setts. Married and divorced to singer Jack Brown (?-?); trumpet player, later lawyer Bill Marcus (1937-1965 his death). Her father, a plumber, and her mother were elegant ballroom dancers, they had a player piano in their house with rolls by Fats Waller. Armen began playing piano at age four, then studied at the New England Conservatory of Music while attending Roxbury Memorial High School. Marcus was a protegee of Fats Waller who gave her piano lessons, and persuaded her to play in a Harlem afterhours club, telling her that "for a white girl, you sure got it there." She also played in the Swing Club on Manhattan's 52nd Street, which was the pre-WWII epicenter of Jazz, then later in her career. she was a summer fixture in Cape Cod nightclubs. Using her birth name of Marie Doherty, Armen played on children's radio programs, then ended up in Manhattan playing on an NBC national radio program.

Spoiler : During the 1950s and 60s, she performed on television shows including Steve Allen's Tonight Show on NBC and The Dave Garroway Show on NBC. President John Kennedy came to hear Armen and Alma Gates White play as the "piano mamas" at the Panama Club in Hyannis in the early 1960s.