Cepenkov got his education in the small Greek schools. In 1844 he moved to Prilep, where he attended the private school of Hadji pop Konstantin Dimkov and father Aleksa, for two years. He also became a tailor and while working in the shop he met a lot of people who would tell him folk stories. Cepenkov was also a good narrator and knew a lot of folk stories. Since then he became a collector of folk stories and other folk works.
In 1857 Cepenkov was a teacher in Prilep. After he met Dimitar Miladinov he started collecting more and more folk works: songs, stories, riddles, and others. In that time he knew more than 150 stories and wrote one to two stories per week, as he mentions in his Autobiography. He also wrote the play Cane Vojvoda, about a dozen of songs with patriotic themes, and the autobiography Autobiografijata. His collected folk works were published in ten books in Skopje in 1972.
Marko Cepenkov died on December 29, 1920.