She graduated from Austin High School and went on to earn a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. Her professional acting journey began on Broadway, with performances in productions such as Rex and Dracula alongside Raúl Juliá.
Mahaffey’s television debut came with the NBC daytime soap opera The Doctors (1979–1981), where she portrayed Ashley Bennett, earning a Daytime Emmy nomination in 1980. She gained widespread recognition for her role as Eve, a hypochondriac in CBS’s Northern Exposure, which earned her the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 1992. Notably, she was the only cast member from the series to receive an Emmy.
Throughout her career, Mahaffey