Mary Cheever (née Winternitz; May 4, 1918 – April 7, 2014) was an American poet, teacher, and local historian. Her books include The Need for Chocolate & Other Poems (1980) and The Changing Landscape: A History of Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough (1990).
She was the wife of writer John Cheever and the mother of writers Susan Cheever and Benjamin Cheever.
Cheever graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1939. By 1964, she was teaching English literature at Briarcliff College three days a week. She also worked as fiction editor of Westchester Magazine. Her poetry collection, The Need for Chocolate & Other Poems, was published by Stein and Day in 1980.
Her local history, The Changing Landscape, was published in 1990 for the Briarcliff Manor-Scarborough Historical Society by Phoenix Publishing. She gave talks at the Ossining Library and other venues about the area's buildings, residents, and history.
Her father was Milton C. Winternitz, dean of the Yale School of Medicine. She married John Cheever in 1941. They had three children: Susan, Benjamin, and Federico. Susan and Benjamin became writers.
They bought a house on Cedar Lane in Ossining in 1961, where she lived for many years. She died at home on April 7, 2014, aged 95.
Susan Cheever discussed her mother's family in Treetops: A Family Memoir (1991). A review in Publishers Weekly highlighted the book's treatment of the differing opportunities and expectations faced by the family's men and women, including Mary's career as a teacher. Susan later said that she had made changes to Home Before Dark at her family's request and removed a chapter from Treetops at her mother's request.
In 1988, Mary and her children Susan and Benjamin sought to prevent Academy Chicago Publishers from issuing a collection of John Cheever's early stories. The publisher was eventually permitted to release a smaller collection of stories in the public domain.