Pearl moved with her husband, professor Joe Pearl, from Detroit to Oklahoma, where she raised two daughters (Eily Raman and Katie) while earning another master's degree, this one in history. She worked in an independent bookstore as well as the Tulsa City-County Library System. Craig Buthod, who worked with Pearl in Tulsa before he became the deputy director of the Seattle Public Library, recruited her to come to Seattle in 1993. She originally traveled to Seattle without her husband for four years, until he reached retirement age and joined her. Pearl said the decision to join the library was one of the few times in her life when she instinctively knew she was doing the right thing.