After her graduation, Cloud worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, teaching as an apprentice at the Phoenix Indian School, before being sent to teach as an arts and crafts instructor on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. After teaching for two years, Cloud married a non-Native, Robert Carver North on August 14, 1943 in Walterboro, South Carolina. Robert served in the U.S. Army during World War II and participated in the Battle of Saipan. While he was away, North completed a master's degree in painting and fine arts under L. C. Mitchell at Ohio University in 1944 and then moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. By the late 1940s they had moved to California and both were studying at Stanford University. Robert became a professor at Stanford and North devoted time to raising their five children. Her daughter, Renya K. Ramirez, is an anthropologist and author.