The son of public school teachers, Terry was raised in Rochester, New York. After dropping out of high school, hitch-hiking around the United States, and returning home to work various jobs, he attended Elim Bible Institute, graduating in 1981. In the early 1980s, Terry married Cindy Dean, a woman he had met in Bible school. In 1985, he met a woman who had borne her second child in prison and was planning an abortion rather than having a third. Terry persuaded her to continue the pregnancy and a daughter named Tila was born later that year. In 1987, Cindy and Randall Terry had a daughter together, whom they named Faith. In March 1988, they took in Tila, then aged three, and her siblings Jamiel, 8, and Ebony, 12, as foster children. All three are biracial; their mother was white. Terry formally adopted the two younger children in 1994 and began describing his family on his résumé as: "Children: One by birth and three black foster children," although Ebony had left home at the age of 16 in 1991. Ebony, who was not adopted by Terry, uses the surname Whetstone, but Jamiel and Tila took and retained the surname Terry. She converted to Islam, a religion Terry has preached is composed of "murderers" and "terrorists." In 2004, Terry described his relationship with Ebony as "good." However, Terry banned Tila from his home after she became pregnant outside of marriage twice by age 18; her first pregnancy ended in miscarriage.