 In 1935, Criswell married the former Bessie Marie "Betty" Harris (1913-2006), the pianist of the Mount Washington church and an education graduate of Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green.Their daughter Mabel Ann was born in Chickasha in 1939.Mabel Ann possessed an exceptional operatic voice and recorded three albums of sacred music in the late 1960s and early 1970s, two with the Ralph Carmichael orchestra.