Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Farber is Jewish and grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina.

After nearly failing Latin in the ninth grade, that summer Farber started reading a Mandarin Chinese language-learning book. A trip to Miami Beach, Florida to see his grandparents coincidentally put him in the midst of a large number of Chinese navy sailors in training there. His Chinese rapidly improved. Back in Greensboro, he took up Italian, Spanish, and French on his own before summer vacation was over. He started taking French and Spanish classes in his sophomore year and also learned Norwegian on his own while in high school. He graduated in 1948 from Greensboro Senior HIgh School (see Grimsley High School).

He then attended the University of North Carolina, where he learned Russian. As a delegate from the National Student Association to what he later called a "Tito propaganda fiesta called the Zagreb Peace Conference", he found other Slavic languages were closely related to Russian. A 16-day boat trip back to the United States with Yugoslavs allowed him to practice his Serbo-Croatian. After covering the Olympic Games in Helsinki one year in the 1950s, he learned Indonesian on another boat trip back to the U.S.

As a newspaper reporter in 1956, Farber was invited by the United States Air Force to cover the airlift of Hungarian refugees from the uprising in Hungary that year. In an Austrian border village, Farber later wrote, he so impressed a Norwegian man, Thorvald Stoltenberg, with knowledge of the man's native tongue that he was allowed to go on one of the covert missions smuggling Hungarians into Austria.

Barry Farber has knowledge of more than 25 languages, including the ones mentioned above. He has published a book titled How to Learn Any Language that details his method for self-study. It is based around a multi-track study of the language, the use of memory aids for vocabulary, and the utilization of "hidden moments" throughout the day.

Farber prefers to say that he is a student of a certain number of languages, rather than saying that he speaks them. Of the languages he has studied, half he "dates" and the other half he "marries". According to Farber: "By languages I date, I mean no grammar and no script, languages like Bengali."

Aside from Bengali, the 25 foreign languages he has studied include these 19 ("marriage" or "dating" specified, when known): Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French (marriage), German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Mandarin, Norwegian (marriage), Portuguese, Russian (marriage), Serbo-Croatian, Spanish (marriage), Swedish and Yiddish. as well as Bulgarian and Korean.

His book, "How to Learn any Language" never specifies all of the 25 languages that his publicity materials say he has studied. He says in the book that when he was inducted into the U.S. Army in 1952, he was "tested and qualified for work in fourteen different languages" and has since learned more in some of those languages as well as the others. He mentioned in the 2005 interview that he still constantly learns bits and pieces of new language...some Albanian phrases or a new phrase each time he went into a grocery store where a Tibetan woman works.

His radio career began in New York City, working as the producer for the Tex and Jinx interview program from Peacock Alley in the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, a live remote broadcast over WNBC-AM 660kc in the mid 1950's at 10:30 PM to Midnight, Monday through Friday. William Safire hired Farber as a producer. Farber eventually hosted his own show on WINS-AM. Begun in 1960, his first talk show was called "Barry Farber’s WINS Open Mike". It was the only talk show on what was then a rock n’ roll station. He left that job for an evening talk show on WOR-AM in 1962, and then became an all-night host in 1967. In 1970 he ran for Congress in New York City's 19th district on the Republican ticket, but was defeated by Bella Abzug. Farber left his talk-radio career for a time in 1977 to delve into politics, running for mayor of New York City, but was defeated.

Farber then joined WMCA for an afternoon drive time talk show, which lasted about 10 years. In 1990 he became a national talk-show host on the ABC Radio Network, which was trying to build a group of nationwide talk shows at the time. Lynn Samuels was forced to share her show with Farber, resulting in her departure from the station. ABC's project later was abandoned, and Farber, Michael Castello, and Alan Colmes got together and quickly formed their own independent network called Daynet. He is now on CRN Digital Talk Radio, weekdays, and on the Talk Radio Network, hosting a one-hour weekend show and filling in for TRN's weekday hosts, most commonly on The Laura Ingraham Show. Early in the 1970s, Farber was an adjunct professor of journalism at St. John's University, New York. Often his former students are heard calling his radio program with admiring words and memories.

On the radio, Farber became easily identifiable by his unique combination of drawn-out Southern drawl, intense delivery, verbose prose, and quick wit. Sponsors loved his ability to deliver a live commercial spot, often ad-libbed, and make whatever the particular product was sound tantalizing; he always sounded like he truly believed in the product.

In 1991 he was named "Talk Show Host of The Year" by the National Association of Radio Talk Show Hosts.

In 2008 Farber married Sara Pentz, a television news reporter and journalist.