He started acting after returning from military service in Korea, and was running three real-estate agencies in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles by the early 1970s after beginning this second career in 1961.

After twenty years of small parts, mainly in television shows, he performed with Pat Harrington in an AT&T educational film called How to Lose Your Best Customer Without Really Trying.

Conley was paired with Ronnie Claire Edwards, who portrayed his wife Corabeth Walton Godsey; their characters married on the show in 1975.

[7] In real life, Conley was married to and later divorced from Jacqueline Stakes, with whom he had two children.

Conley died on July 7, 2013, at a care facility in Newbury Park, California of complications from dementia.