Bill Owen was born on February 1. 1931 as William H. Owen in Grand Forks.  His father Owen T. Owen (born in Milbank, South Dakota on September 15, 1890) was an outstanding track star at the University of North Dakota where he graduated from law school. He 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 September 12, 1893) was the daughter of the founder of Congress Candy Company, a major manufacturer and distributor of candy. She was prominent in social activities and education.

In Grand Forks he 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.

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.

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 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.

Bill's two brothers, Owen T. Owen Jr. ("Tudor") and Jack served in the United States Navy and United States Army respectively so when Bill joined the United States Air Force he completed the circle of all three branches of the military. Bill was assigned to the American Forces Network in Germany where he did play-by-play announcing of football, basketball, and baseball.

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 began working at station KFYR in Bismarck, as an announcer, sports director, and cowboy entertainer "Marshall Bill."  Initially, Bill was reluctant to play the part of Marshall Bill; he wanted to focus on doing sports. 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

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 Sept. 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.