Barbara Ann "Bonnie" Steele is the daughter of Catharine Kitty McColgan and Richard Steele and the granddaughter of Mary Jane Tinneny of Greenock, Scotland and Philadelphia.  She was born and raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas and completed a degree in Nursing at the University of Arkansas.  Following graduation in 1982, she worked as a labor and delivery nurse at Saint Mary's Hospital in Rogers Arkansas and later as a home health nurse then as an emergency room nurse at the Bates Medical Center in Bentonville, Arkansas a position she still served in as of  2002.