Mary Jo Rapini grew up in Wisconsin as number six of nine children. She lived in the small town of Bancroft to pursue an initial career as a licensed vocational nurse at Marshfield Clinic and the University of Iowa. Later she graduated with a master's degree (M.Ed.) in counseling from the University of Houston in 1987, and is a now a Licensed Professional Counselor (L.P.C.)

Her faith was strengthened by her near-death experience of a ruptured cerebral aneurysm in 2003, from which she has had a miraculous complete recovery without neurological deficit. Mary Jo has run in several marathons and ultra-marathons, including Houston, Boston, the Grand Canyon, Pike's Peak, and the Huntsville Sun-Mart 50 miler and Rocky Raccoon 100 miler.

Mary Jo Rapini's experiences in psychotherapy have been diverse. She has been a counselor at Houston Child Guidance Center and for the Child Resource and Information Service (CRIS). After ten years in Houston, she lived in Lubbock, Texas for nine years, where she volunteered for Contact Lubbock, training volunteers and monitoring a crisis line. In Lubbock she was active in oncology counseling, and ran several cancer support groups and consulted at the University Medical Center in Lubbock.

Later Mary Jo moved back to Houston where she has maintained a private practice, with an office on Times Boulevard in the Village area. She currently is a consultant for patients of several physicians performing obesity surgery. She has run sex therapy sessions for a gynecology group and is a certified anger management therapist.