Maggie was somewhat of a wild-child, always flitting from one thing to the next, never settling down, always trying to please her father, but never getting his approval. She had a difficult relationship with her father, partly because of his disapproval with her life-style and partly because Maggie blamed her father for her deaf brother Mark's suicide. Maggie came to Llanview just before taking her vows to become a nun to visit her cousin, Andrew Carpenter.

While in Llanview, she helped Patrick Thornhart escape Irish terrorists. She also became closer to Max Holden, and was the first one to notice that Max's son, Frankie, was deaf. Max and Maggie grew closer, but Maggie took her vows as a nun. She had finally gained her father's approval by insisting she was sure this was what she wanted to commit to for the rest of her life. Maggie worked as a teacher in a school for the deaf, but she slowly got more and more involved in Max's plot to make Carlo think he's dying and get back the money Carlo stole from Asa Buchanan. Maggie became a spiritual advisor for Carlo until Carlo figured out their plan and tried to have both Maggie and Max killed. They are rescued, but not before they admit their feelings for each other. When Maggie is reassigned to the Philippines, she leaves the church to be able to stay with Max.

Maggie and Max go to St. Maarten and make love there for the first time. Maggie's father is staying at the same hotel and asks her help to move Eleanor Armitage's body from his room, where she died, back to her own room. Maggie does help him and soon after she returns to Llanview, Eleanor's son, Ian, shows up and begins asking Maggie questions about his mother's locket. Maggie and Ian confront her father, Bishop Carpenter, who eventually does give back the locket, but it is empty. Maggie starts having dreams about her childhood, but when she has her father come to town to help explain them, he has a heart attack and dies. After getting the lock of hair from the locket, which the Bishop had given to Andrew in case anything happened to him, Maggie and Ian go to Ian's mother's old home to search for the truth. They find it, Maggie and Ian are twins, Eleanor Armitage was their mother and Bishop Carpenter their father.

Happy that she now has a brother, Maggie returns to Llanview and uses her father's inheritance to buy a warehouse to start a school for the circus arts. Max, who want the property for himself, tries to sabotage the warehouse and flood it, but ends up burning it down and almost killing Maggie in the process. Maggie and Max get engaged, but when she learns the truth about his destroying the building, she breaks the engagement and leaves town. Maggie goes to Paris to take lessons at a school for the circus arts. Since her brother Ian's death, she is a wealthy woman, Ian left most of the Armitage fortune to Maggie.