## The Marriage and the Failed Practice
Shortly after graduation, Walker married Albert Miller, a fellow medical student. The marriage ceremony on November 16, 1855, was unconventional in ways that mattered to her: she kept her own surname, and she refused to include the word “obey” in her vows. She wore trousers and a man’s coat to the wedding, as she did to most occasions by that point in her life.
The couple opened a joint medical practice in Rome, New York. It failed. The public was not prepared to trust a woman physician, and the practice struggled for years before effectively collapsing. Walker had earned her credentials through the same training as her husband. The market’s response to those credentials was different based solely on her sex.
She continued to believe in her competence and her calling despite this discouragement. She sought additional training: in 1860 she briefly attended Bowen Collegiate Institute in Iowa, later Lenox College, until she was suspended for refusing to leave its all-male debating society. She attended lectures at Hygeio-Therapeutic College in New York in 1862. She remained convinced that she could practice medicine and determined to find conditions under which she would be allowed to do so.
The marriage to Miller deteriorated over the same period. She eventually discovered that he had been unfaithful, and she sought a divorce — a difficult, stigmatizing, and expensive legal process in mid-nineteenth century America. The divorce was finalized in 1869. Walker lived the rest of her life as an unmarried woman, never changing her title from “Dr.” to anything that would obscure her professional identity.