Virginia Carol Varnadore Aebersold was born in Texas City, Texas, and lived in Chicago, Illinois, until she was 12 years old. Her family then moved to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where her father worked as a lab technician at the Y-12 plant and later at K-25. Her mother worked as a bank teller at the Bank of Oak Ridge.
Aebersold graduated from Oak Ridge High School in 1966 and attended Tennessee Wesleyan University in Athens. She earned a B.S. in Music Education at the University of Tennessee (UT),Knoxville in 1970.
