Betty was the third of six children born to devout Roman Catholic parents, Marita and Frank Bisceglia. Her mother was Irish-American and her father was of Italian descent; he founded a plastering firm with his brothers. She was raised in an "aspirational" family, one not born to affluence but trying hard to achieve upper-middle-class status via business success, education, and assiduous attention to proper manners and behavior.
Betty attended and later graduated from the College of Mount Saint Vincent, a small Catholic women's college in Riverdale, New York
Betty met her future husband, Dan Broderick, eldest son in another large Catholic family, at a football game between the University of Southern California and the University of Notre Dame, where Dan was an undergraduate. They dated for some time and became engaged. Dan's family was initially charmed by Betty's beauty, graciousness, and sophistication.
When the couple became engaged, Dan was attending the Cornell University Medical School (located in New York City rather than Ithaca, New York). The couple were married on April 12, 1969, at the Immaculate Conception Church in Eastchester in a lavish ceremony planned by Betty's mother. They honeymooned on a Caribbean cruise and later stayed with friends in St. Thomas.
She returned from her honeymoon pregnant with her first child, daughter Kim, and continued to work until the day before she gave birth. Afterward, she quit her job and devoted herself to home and motherhood, which, she stated, had always been her only ambitions. She gave birth to four more children: a daughter called Lee, two sons named Daniel and Rhett, and an unnamed boy who died two days after birth.
