Culmone was born in Delia, Sicily, where he lived in a farming area and learned to ride horses.
His mother died during World War II and in 1946 he emigrated to the United States to join his father in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
A year later, he was meeting with great success as an apprentice rider, scoring back-to-back triple wins on racecards at Tropical Park in December 1949.
[1] In 1950 Culmone tied the great Bill Shoemaker for the most wins of any jockey in the United States with 388, a total that equaled a forty-four-year-old world record set by Walter Miller in 1906.
[2] Culmone worked as a contract rider for the famous Brookmeade Stable and also rode for noted owners such as Calumet Farm and Harry Z. Isaacs.