Reynolds was born on April 1, 1932, in El Paso, Texas, to Maxene N. "Minnie" Harman and Raymond Francis "Ray" Reynolds, a carpenter who worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad. She was of Scotch-Irish and English ancestry and was raised in a strict Nazarene church of her domineering mother. She had a brother two years her senior. Reynolds was a Girl Scout, once saying that she wanted to die as the world's oldest living Girl Scout. Reynolds was also a member of The International Order of Job's Daughters.