Ingraham grew up in a middle-class family in Glastonbury, Connecticut. and graduated from Glastonbury High School, in 1981.

Ingraham earned a bachelor's degree at Dartmouth College, in 1985, and a law degree at the University of Virginia School of Law, in 1991. As a Dartmouth undergraduate, she was a staff member of the independent conservative newspaper, The Dartmouth Review. In her senior year, she was the newspaper's editor-in-chief, its first female editor. She wrote a few controversial articles during her tenure, such as a piece characterizing a campus gay rights group as "cheerleaders for latent campus Sodomites". She also secretly tape recorded the organization's meetings, and sent copies to the participants' parents.Reed, Ishmael. (1999-01-23) "Unequal rights for haters." Salon.com. Jeffrey Hart, the faculty adviser for The Dartmouth Review, described Ingraham as having "the most extreme antihomosexual views imaginable," and noted that "she went so far as to avoid a local eatery where she feared the waiters were homosexual and might touch her silverware or spit on her food, exposing her to AIDS." In 1997, Ingraham wrote an essay in the Washington Post in which she stated that she changed her views after witnessing "the dignity, fidelity and courage" with which her brother and his late companion coped with AIDS. She said she now understands why gays need protection and regrets her "callous rhetoric." However, in 2009, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation named Ingraham as one of the "worst anti-gay and anti-transgender voices of 2008," citing her statements regarding transgendered people and "allusions that being gay is a 'bad choice'."

In the late 1980s, Ingraham worked as a speechwriter in the Ronald Reagan administration for the Domestic Policy advisor. She also briefly served as editor of The Prospect, the magazine issued by Concerned Alumni of Princeton. After receiving her Juris Doctor from the University of Virginia School of Law, in 1991, she served as a law clerk for Judge Ralph K. Winter, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York and subsequently clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She then worked as an attorney at the New York-based law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom.

Ingraham has had two stints as a cable television host. In the late 1990s, she became a CBS commentator and hosted the MSNBC program Watch It! Several years later, Ingraham began openly campaigning for another cable television show on her radio program. She finally got her wish in 2008, when Fox News Channel gave her a three-week trial run for a new show entitled Just In.

She appeared on a 1995 cover of The New York Times Magazine for an article about rising young conservatives, in which she joked about subjugating Third World countries.

She also appeared on the August 3, 2010, episode of The Colbert Report, where Stephen Colbert implied that she had integrated "hideous, hackneyed racial stereotypes" into her book The Obama Diaries. In reply she suggested that a word Colbert had previously used to label her, banshee, which is of Irish origin, also contained racial overtones, suggesting that it may be offensive to Native Americans.

Radio show host

Ingraham launched The Laura Ingraham Show in April 2001, which is heard on 306 stations and on XM Satellite Radio. The show was originally syndicated by Infinity's (now CBS's) Westwood One, but is now syndicated by Talk Radio Network. Ingraham is also the official guest host of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel and a weekly contributor with her segment, "The Ingraham Angle." She anchored a three-week show, in June 2008, called, Just In with Laura Ingraham. Great News on the Laura Ingraham Front by Michael Gaynor America's Election HQ Returns Monday - mediabistro.com: TVNewser

In one of her most famous incidents, on Election Day 2006 Ingraham encouraged listeners to jam the phone line of a toll-free Democratic Party service for reporting voting problems. No tangible consequences came of it.In 2008, Laura Ingraham was rated as the No. 6 radio show host in America, by Talkers Magazine. She was as high as No. 5, in the past, according to the same publication. Talkers Magazine Online

Ingraham is represented by the Executive Speakers Bureau, of Memphis, Tennessee, and receives between $20,000-$30,000 per appearance.

Books

• The Hillary Trap: Looking for Power in All the Wrong Places, first published June 2000, while the author was a talk show host on MSNBC, was updated and reissued in paperback December 25, 2005. It analyzes and reinterprets Hillary Clinton as a faux feminist, whose "liberal feminism has created a culture that rewards dependency, encourages fragmentation, undermines families, and celebrates victimhood".

• Shut Up & Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the U.N. are Subverting America, published October 25, 2003, decries liberal "elites" in politics, the media, academia, arts and entertainment, business, and international organizations, on behalf of "disrespected" Middle Americans, whom the author praises as "the kind of people who are the lifeblood of healthy democratic societies".

• Power to the People, a New York Times number one best seller, published September 11, 2007, focuses on what Ingraham calls the "pornification" of America and stresses the importance of popular participation in culture, promoting conservative values in family life, education and patriotism.

• The Obama Diaries, a New York Times number one best seller, published July 13, 2010. The book purports to be a collection of diary entries made by Barack Obama, though fictional and satirical, criticizing himself, his family and officials in his administration.

Ingraham once was engaged to conservative author and fellow Dartmouth alumnus Dinesh D'Souza and has dated former New Jersey Democratic Senator Robert Torricelli, Laura Ingraham.

She was estranged from her brother, Curtis, for many years. In 1997, however, she wrote in the Washington Post that she and her brother had reconciled after he came out as gay, and that getting to know him and his partner had tempered her personal views on homosexuality.

In April 2005, she announced that she was engaged to businessman James V. Reyes, with a wedding planned in May or June 2005. On April 26, 2005, she announced that she had undergone breast cancer surgery. On May 11, 2005, Ingraham told listeners that her engagement to Reyes was canceled, citing issues regarding her diagnosis with breast cancer. Despite the breakup, she maintained that the two remain good friends and had told listeners, in 2006, that she was in good health. Laura Ingraham Recovering from Cancer Surgery

She is a convert to Roman Catholicism. In May 2008, Ingraham adopted a young girl from Guatemala, whom she has named Maria Caroline. Usmagazine.com | Radio Host Laura Ingraham Adopts Girl From Guatemala In July 2009 she adopted a 13-month-old boy, Michael Dmitri, from Russia.

Code Red Rally

On December 8, 2009, Ingraham broadcast her support of a rally protesting the 2009 health care reform bill to be held in Washington, D.C. at the U.S. Capitol on December 15, 2009.