 In 1936 she married John Frederick Tanner, the proprietor of an Indian craft store in Tucson.Her involvement in her husband's work was one influence that shifted her research interests in the direction of regional cultural anthropology.In 1937, when Cummings retired and his former student, Emil Haury, took over as chair of the department, Haury initiated a change in its name to the Department of Anthropology, to reflect the breadth of scholarly activities it had come to encompass; he also aimed to expand it to include social anthropology, applied anthropology, and ethnology.