Grasselli Brown was born in 1928 to Hungarian immigrant parents Nicholas and Vera Gecsy. She grew up in a Hungarian neighborhood in the Buckeye Road area in Cleveland, Ohio during the Great Depression. 
Her parents valued education and encouraged her to receive a college education in spite of economic and family difficulties. 
Around 1946, her father opened a business in Elyria, Ohio, making sand cast aluminum parts. The foundry eventually failed and the family went bankrupt. Her brother Robert died from Hodgkin's lymphoma. While she was in college, her parents divorced.