He was born in Kristiania as a son of Supreme Court Justice Thorvald Boye (1871–1943) and Mia Esmarch (1880–1966).
After the Second World War reached Norway on 9 April 1940, and the government fled the capital, Boye set out on skis to catch up with them.
After doing so he acted as a courier to Stockholm, returned to Molde where he followed the flight of the Norwegian National Treasury to Tromsø.
[1] He was a legation concellor in Belgium from 1946 to 1948, assistant secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1948 to 1949, secretary-general for the Northern European group in NATO from 1949 to 1951.
He was then the permanent under-secretary of state (the highest-ranking civil position) in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1965 to 1971, then the Norwegian ambassador to Spain from 1972 to 1977 and Sweden from 1977 to 1981.