Ryan Conner Ryan Conner wasn’t raised in the kind of environment people usually imagine when they hear her name today. Born as Deborah Lea Hinkle on February 12, 1971, in Santa Ana, California, she spent most of her childhood after her family moved to Idaho. She has spoken publicly about growing up in a strict Jehovah’s Witness household and described herself as living a very sheltered life during those years. According to interviews, she said she wasn’t exposed to much outside that environment and followed a very structured upbringing. One thing that stands out in her story is that she married young. Ryan said she got married at 18 and entered adulthood very quickly. She has spoken about how sheltered she felt at that stage of life and how marriage became the first major life decision she made independently. Publicly available biographies don’t document much about her formal education or university life, which is why most of her story before fame is told through family and personal experiences rather than academics.