Rachel Maddow was born on April 1, 1973, in Castro Valley, California. Her father, Robert B. Maddow, was a former United States Air Force captain who resigned his service the year before her birth and went on to work for the East Bay Municipal Utility District as a lawyer. Her mother, Elaine, worked as a school program supervisor. David, her older brother, is her only sibling. Her paternal grandfather was from a family of Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to the United States from the Russian Empire (the original surname was "Medvedof"). Her paternal grandmother was of Protestant (Dutch) ancestry, while her English and Irish ancestors can be traced back to her Newfoundland and Labrador mother. According to her mother, Maddow's family is "very, very Catholic," and she grew up in a "quite conservative" environment.

Maddow was a competitive athlete who competed in volleyball, basketball, and swimming in high school. She has described herself as "a cross between the jock and the antisocial girl" in high school, referencing John Hughes films. After graduating from Castro Valley High School, she attended Stanford University. As a freshman, she was outed as a lesbian by the college newspaper, which published an interview before informing her parents.

In 1994, she graduated from Stanford University with a Bachelor's Degree in Public Policy. Upon graduation, she was awarded the John Gardner Fellowship. In 1995, she was offered both a Rhodes Scholarship and a Marshall Scholarship, and she chose the former. As a result, she became the first openly lesbian Rhodes Scholar. She went on to earn a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) in Politics from the University of Oxford in 2001, under the supervision of Lucia Zedner. Her thesis was titled "HIV/AIDS and Health Care Reform in British and American Prisons".

Relationships/ Marriage

Maddow came out about her homosexuality when she was a 17-year-old freshman at Stanford University. She met her partner, artist Susan Mikula, when Maddow worked odd jobs in Massachusetts while finishing her dissertation. Their first date was at a National Rifle Association event. In 1999, the pair moved into an old farmhouse in rural Massachusetts. In recent years, Maddow has divided her time between her homes in New York and Massachusetts, where she has continued to reside with her partner Susan and the couple's Labrador retriever.