Bill Owen was born on February 1. 1931 as William H. Owen in Grand Forks.  Family members liked to joke that "bills always come on the first of the month." At the time, Grand Forks had a population of about 20,000.

Bill's family had a distinguished legal heritage. His paternal grandfather, John Hayes Owen, was born in Belfast, Ireland, attended Trinity College in Dublin, and emigrated first to Canada and later to the Dakota Territory, where he became a lawyer. One famous case involved defending a Native American chief who had shot and killed a drunken man harassing his wife. Although many expected a conviction, John Hayes Owen successfully argued that the chief deserved the same legal rights as any white citizen. The acquittal reportedly brought cheers from the courtroom, making Bill's grandfather something of an early civil rights advocate. His grandmother, Estelle Stevens Owen, also made history as the first woman to practice before the South Dakota Supreme Court.

Other relatives also enjoyed remarkable careers. Uncle Henry Grattan Owen eventually became an Assistant Attorney General under Tom Clark during the Truman administration. Cousin Art Owen Jr. flew P-51 fighters during World War II, was shot down over France, escaped with the assistance of French civilians, returned to England, and later served as an instructor at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

His father Owen T. Owen (born in Milbank, South Dakota on Sep 15. 1890) was an outstanding track star at the University of North Dakota where he graduated from law school. Bill remembered seeing photographs of him winning 440-yard races by large margins. After his athletic career, his father became a respected attorney, practicing law in Grand Forks with his older brother Henry Grattan Owen. Their firm, Owen & Owen, employed their sister Winifred as secretary, who herself held a law degree. Bill enjoyed visiting his father's office in the local bank building. Father held many public offices including state tax commissioner and chairman of the state's Workman's Compensation bureau.

Bill's mother Else Rohde Owen (born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Sep 12. 1893) was the daughter of the founder of Congress Candy Company, a major manufacturer and distributor of candy. Growing up in a predominantly German-speaking city, she spoke only German when she entered first grade. Nevertheless, she eventually mastered English so completely that she became an English teacher. A graduate in home economics, she also supervised kitchens at state fairs and similar events. She was prominent in social activities and education.

As a child, Bill also enjoyed playing marbles, particularly a game called "pothole," though he admitted he never advanced far in marble tournaments.

In Grand Forks Bill attended Wilder Elementary School. He and his brothers used to sell the Herald on Grand Forks city streets. "I have a cute story about that," Owen said. "When I was a newsboy, I was set up across from the Dacotah hotel selling newspapers, filling in that day for my brother. That was a thrill for me; in those days, we used to scream out the headline, and say "in the Grand Forks Herald, read all about it." That day, I was yelling it out when a dentist from across the street came over and said "I'll take them all." I had about 10 copies, and I asked if he was getting them for someone else. He said, 'No. I want to shut you up, you're driving me crazy.' "

In 1942 as seventh grader the family moved to Bismarck, North Dakota. In 1948 as senior at the Bismarck high school he was the winner of the local Elks Foundation Scholarship contest.

His love of baseball began in childhood. Sitting in the sandbox, he pretended to broadcast games while following the hometown Grand Forks Chiefs of the Northern League. He admired the great radio announcers of the era, including Harlow Wilcox of Fibber McGee and Molly and Don Wilson of The Jack Benny Program. Those broadcasters inspired his lifelong dream of working behind a microphone.

Bill participated in football, baseball, basketball, and track as a young man and became an avid fisherman, water and snow skier, and licensed pilot and one day achieved his dream of parachuting from an airplane. He has said his toughest accomplishment was learning to ride a unicycle.

During World War II, at age eleven, he sold newspapers on a street corner, enthusiastically shouting the headlines. One day a dentist across the street bought every remaining newspaper, not because he wanted to read them, but because Bill's booming voice was disrupting his practice. Bill always chose to regard the incident as a compliment.

Although his mother hoped he would become a physician, Bill enrolled at USC as a pre-med student only to discover that his heart belonged to broadcasting. He frequently visited NBC's studios at Sunset and Vine to watch the performers he had grown up listening to. Gradually overcoming his natural shyness, he changed his major and pursued radio instead.

He was a good enough athlete that he played on the junior varsity football team at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. He said he still has “a sore finger” from tackling future New York Giants Football Hall of Fame inductee Frank Gifford.  Bill said he played freshman basketball for the Trojans, wearing Bill Sharman’s former jersey. “I wore his former jersey, but I never filled his shoes”.
He considered himself a good shooter and once made 113 consecutive free throws during practice, though no witnesses were present. One of his favorite basketball memories involved defeating a former Washington Generals player in a game of HORSE after making an improbable full-court bank shot.

Bill had an older brother, Jack, who became a successful advertising executive in Chicago and later New York with the Foote, Cone & Belding advertising agency. Jack also pursued acting on the side, appearing in television commercials, several films, and a few television productions. Another older brother, Owen Tudor Owen Jr., known simply as Tudor, had an even greater influence on Bill's life. During World War II, Tudor enlisted in the Navy as a teenager and served in the Pacific, including the Philippine Islands, returning safely from the war. During one leave, he visited Bill's eighth-grade classroom in uniform, answering countless questions from fascinated classmates about life in the Navy. Tudor also introduced Bill to many of the interests that would shape his future career, including baseball, football, classic radio programs, old movies, and collecting trivia. Since Bill's two brothers, Owen T. Owen Jr. ("Tudor") and Jack, served in the United States Navy and the United States Army, respectively, Bill completed the family's representation of all three military branches by joining the United States Air Force.

He was editor of his high school newspaper (the Bismarck, North Dakota "Hi-Herald") and after three years of pre-med studies at the University of Southern California, he switched his major to telecommunications. This upset his mother very much. He made his decision after watching the live radio shows performed in Hollywood while he was in college.  “I could see that I couldn’t be one of the actors, but I could become the announcer,” Bill said. “My heroes were the announcers.”. He started his announcing career at USC working on campus stations KTRU and KUSC-FM. He graduated cum laude from the University of California in 1953.

Military service also shaped his career. During the Korean War, Bill entered the Air Force as an aviation cadet. After the war ended, many prospective pilots were reassigned, and Bill found himself performing routine duties overseas. While listening to the American Forces Network, he heard sports broadcasts and successfully auditioned for an announcing position in Frankfurt. Thanks to perfect timing—a broadcaster was just leaving the service—Bill earned the job. He hosted a nightly sports program and traveled throughout Germany, driven by his own chauffeur, broadcasting baseball, football, and basketball games.

While in service he met Rosemary Bobo of Gray Court, South Carolina, a high school home economics teacher, and they were married on October 1. 1955.

In the mid-1950s, he landed his first professional position at station KFYR in Bismarck, North Dakota, where he became sports director, broadcasting play-by-play sports while also hosting a popular children's television program as cowboy entertainer "Marshall Bill," where he interviewed young viewers before showing Looney Tunes cartoons or Hopalong Cassidy westerns. Somewhat reluctant since he really wanted to focus on doing sports. But in the end did go all in so when one year Bill was asked to lead the annual rodeo parade, by far the biggest event in Bismarck-Mandan, Bill practiced riding for several weeks so he would look his best, waving to the crowd and throwing candy kisses to the youngsters along the parade route.
It has been written that a tense situation for the Secret Service occurred in Bismarck in 1960 when a man approached presidential candidate John F. Kennedy with a pistol in each hand. This happened when Kennedy stopped in the Capitol City during his campaign tour to do an interview at television station KFYR. Host Bill Owen wore a sheriff's uniform complete with cap pistols. Just as Kennedy was entering the studio, Owen walked towards the door, "twirling his six-shooters." ⁶

One unforgettable on-air moment occurred when a doctor's wife secretly inserted a Playboy centerfold into his birthday book as a practical joke. Reading birthday greetings live without rehearsal, Bill unexpectedly turned the page to the surprise photograph, leaving him momentarily speechless while everyone behind the scenes enjoyed the prank.

Bill joined WLW radio and TV in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1957 as a staff announcer. In 1958 - 1960 he hosted a classical and semi-classical music radio program called Music for You (700 WLW-AM) which surprisingly beat rock stations in the ratings. “Rock was not my forte,” he said.  Bill had an eclectic taste in music, later emceeing rock, pop, and big band formats.

By 1960, he was experiencing a meteoric rise to fame in the radio and television industry in New York City. Owen arrived in the Big Apple as staff announcer for the radio-television station WABC. One Sunday morning in the fall of 1960, Bill Owen and six other air personalities toured part of New York City as a photographer snapped their pictures at Penn Station, by the skyscrapers and on the subway. “The joke at the time was that WABC was one notch higher than the police calls in the ratings,” Bill said in an interview “There were shows with Broadway tunes and talk shows. There was no cohesiveness to the format.” ⁵
Hal Neal, then the general manager at the station and later the president of ABC Radio, had decided that Top 40 rock & roll would generate higher ratings even though WMCA and WINS were using that format. "What happened was that WABC revolutionized American radio."

“I have always been conversational,” Bill added in regards to his announcing style. “I can be the stentorian announcer, but that’s not my most natural style.”  

Very shortly, he had his own daily, two-hour music show to go along with his announcing duties. The new sports anchor at the station was an arrogant and verbose attorney, Howard Cosell, who had been hosting a show on ABC, Speaking of Sports. Cosell took a liking to the announcer, largely because of Owen's extensive knowledge of sports. Whenever Cosell was away, he got Owen to fill in for him on his radio show, and when New York obtained a new major league baseball franchise, the Mets in 1962, he often subbed for Cosell on the Mets post-game shows. Owen later commented on his association with his mentor stating that, "Howard had a gentle side and could give good advice."

In the early 60s, ABC began a sports anthology series Wide World of Sports, that became very popular. For the series, Owen was sent on assignment to cover boxing and ice skating events.

At the 1961 convention of the National Association of Broadcasters Newton Minow, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, gave a blistering talk, referring to television as a "vast wasteland," especially in terms of programs for young people. He challenged the broadcasters to improve their programming. The first network to accept Minow's challenge was ABC. In the fall of 1962, it created a show "geared towards children and teenagers" called Discovery and hired two Hollywood actors, Frank Buxton and Virginia Gilmore, as co-hosts, and Owen as the announcer. Originally, the format centered on the studio with Buxton and Gilmore exploring the topics of history, culture, science, and the arts.

In 1965, a firm in Cincinnati, Ohio, hired Owen to be the voice of Ellery Queen (on over 500 radio episodes). These short, syndicated radio presentations were called Ellery Queen's Minute Mysteries. The mystery was presented on the air in 60 seconds, and listeners were encouraged to call in with the solution to the cases in order to win prizes. The shows ran in syndication until the early 1980s.

In 1966, the book Radio's Golden Age was released and Owen and Buxton were the authors. Buxton left Discovery and Bill was promoted from studio announcer on Discovery to the co-host with actress Virginia Gibson, who had been nominated for a Broadway Tony Award. When the fifth season began on September 25. 1966, the show was filmed in color and the format changed, allowing Owen and Gilmore to travel to different locations for filming.
The show went on to capture some Emmy awards.  “Since it was on Sunday mornings at 11:30 eastern time it was mostly a vocabulary for a 15-year-old’s intellect, but we had a lot of adults that watched it,” Bill said of Discovery, which ran until 1971.