A native of Vernon, Texas, Melody is a second-generation Texas Tech graduate.  She graduated in 1971 with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Business Education.  After teaching business subjects at the high school level, she graduated in 1980 from the University of Texas at Austin with a Masters of Business Administration with an emphasis in accounting.  She obtained her Certified Public Accounting designation in 1984.

Until her retirement from BDO USA LLP in 2018, she spent thirty-eight years in accounting.  This included eleven years at Trammell Crow Company, ten years with Ernst & Young and five years with BDO USA LLP.  Her main focus was with flow-through entity taxation and private equity structure.  Until his death in 2019, she also handled the financial administration of the CEO Institute, a company founded by her husband, Lane Kramer,  in 1991.

In retirement, Melody manages her family's farming and oil and gas interests and is involved on various charities in the Dallas area.  She also serves as treasurer of the Wesley-Rankin Trust Fund.

She has one daughter, Dr. Mary Allison Kramer, who is in her last year of her gynecology residency at Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas.