McGinley was born on March 21, 1905 in Ontario, Oregon, but moved to a ranch near Iliff, Colorado, when she was only three months old. Her father, David McGinley, speculated in real estate, usually unsuccessfully, which caused the family to move frequently. She didn't enjoy her early childhood on the ranch where she and her brother felt isolated and friendless. After her father's death in 1917, her mother, Julia Keisel McGinley, took the two children back to her home in Ogden, Utah, where they moved in with Julia's sister. McGinley liked this stable new environment where she felt secure, enjoying for the first time the sense of having a permanent home.

McGinley attended the University of Utah. After graduation, she taught school, first in Utah and then in New Rochelle, New York. Soon she began submitting poetry to magazines; this early material was serious and romantic. McGinley compared her...