She married Daniel J. Sullivan, a Brooklyn employee of the Railway Express Agency, on January 7, 1940. Her son, Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. (1940 - 1974), was born in October 1940 and later had five children. Dorothy's marriage to Sullivan also produced two daughters, Genevieve Herrlein and Ellen Ruth Hourigan (1943-2017), before the union ended in 1945. Dorothy later married Dominick Pirone in New York City on December 8, 1948. Three children were born of this second marriage: Donna Analovitch, Richard Pirone (1950-2001), and Linda Ruth Tosetti (b. 1954). She lived in Durham, Connecticut, raised Arabian horses, and wrote "My Dad, the Babe".