Ken Owen was born in Western Pennsylvania. He was one of eight children. His family lived in several different places until February 1960 when his dad bought a one hundred two acre farm and he became a farm\country boy. Along with his older brother and sister, he had to help with all the farm chores. When his brother and sister left for boarding school he became totally responsible for all the am and pm chores and running the farm. He had 15 cows to milk, 150 chickens to tend to and 30 other beef and young calves to care for, several goats and a dozen sheep and lambs to care for. He learnt to love animals and they taught him responsibility.

At age 14 for the 9th grade he left the family farm and went to boarding school. At the boarding school he worked on their eight hundred acre farm, the dairy, the maintenance department, and a wood furniture factory making chairs, chests, and doing other jobs. After 4 years of boarding school He went to a 1000 student private college near Washington, D.C. He got an undergraduate BA degree in psychology however he decided he wanted to teach and needed to get a teaching degree, so he went to the University of Maryland, College Park to get a secondary Ed degree. He graduated in December 1977, and then moved to Andrews University where he got his Masters in Teaching in elementary education. He then moved to Salisbury, NC in 1978. He became principal and grades 5 thru 8 teacher.

After several years of that he took a teaching job in the Charlotte, NC Pubic School where he only had to teach the sixth grade. He did that for nearly a decade. He helped co author a book for teachers on ways to celebrate the Constitution' Bicentennial (1987). He also was a working member of the committee to write a new reading curriculum for the district. In the 1983-84 school year he was Long Creek Elementary School's Teacher of the Year.

He left the public school setting to teach in a private school in Columbia, South Carolina. He was seventh and eight grade homeroom teacher and taught woodshop, PE, World History, Freshman English and Sophomore English and other classes.

His wife got a transfer to the VA Hospital in Nashville in 1993. He used that as an opportunity to go back to graduate school and get his School Psychology degree while working at the Psychiatric Hospital at Vanderbilt.

He graduated in August of 1996 and started to work for Metro Nashville

Psychology Division during the 1996-97 school year. He has been W. A. Bass's School Psychologist since the 2003-04 school year.