The family moved on numerous occasions during Browne's early life as his father sought new opportunities in banking.
Browne's father lost his bank, his job, and his life savings in the stock market crash of 1929, and he grew up in poverty during the Great Depression.
Browne attended the University of Alabama due to the encouragement of a high school teacher, Elbert Coleman, and the financial support of his sister Joan.
Following graduation, he immediately entered the U.S. Army and served in an artillery corps in the European theater in World War II.
His unit entered Europe at Marseille and was part of the allied thrust that drove the Germans back into Germany.
Browne returned to the United States and entered the master's program at Columbia University, graduating with a degree in Victorian literature.
From there he took a faculty position in English at the University of Nebraska, where he was influenced by recently retired folklorist Louise Pound.
His two mentors at UCLA were the famed Americanist Leon Howard and well-known folklorist Wayland Hand.
His dissertation was later turned into a book entitled The Alabama Folk Lyric: A Study in the Origins and Media of Dissemination (1979).
His years at Purdue were also marked by a growing conviction that English departments were not teaching a wide enough spectrum of literature.
His wife Pat soon became the manager of the press and was the driving force through its growth as the premier publishing outlet for academic books on popular culture until her retirement in 2002.
This conference showcased the broad conceptual thinking and foundational ideas that would lead to the widespread teaching of popular culture at American and international universities.
As a means of promoting the academic study of popular culture internationally, Ray and Pat Browne organized numerous conferences in the United Kingdom from 1978 until 2001.
In addition to their international conferences, Ray and Pat made two round-the-world trips on behalf of the U.S. State Department to promote the study of American popular culture.
[2] In 1973, Browne created the first academic program dedicated to studying popular culture at Bowling Green University.
Through the years he appeared twice on the CBS Evening News, twice on the Phil Donahue Show, twice on the Geraldo Rivera Show, and on BBC News, and was quoted in hundreds of magazines and newspapers including Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune, People, and many others.