This paper examines how the careers of black female nurses in South Africa influenced their marriage and family relations, 1960s-1980s. Nurses were one of the largest groups of professional African women during this time and had particularly demanding careers. Furthermore, the number of women entering nursing increased during the 1960s and 1980s, resulting in more nurses from diverse socio-economic backgrounds facing shifting marriage and family relations than the educated elite of earlier times. However, scholars have not yet fully captured the complex social and professional pressures these women dealt with. Drawing on interviews with sixty-seven retired nurses, this paper argues that while marriage choices for these professional women moved toward a preference for companionate marriage during this time, this change was uneven and non-linear. Women, men, and their parents all had to negotiate the changes new economic and professional roles for women brought family relations and did so in different ways. The article concludes that the ability of a nurse to succeed in both her profession and family life had less to do with her profession and more to do with the family relationships she had. In doing so, this paper seeks to expand our understanding of changing marriage relations of professional African women in the late 20th century.