Davida Charlotte Olinger was born January 9, 1902 in St. Paul, Nebraska. Her parents were the Reverend Doctor Stanton J. Olinger (1868-1921) and Anna Cook (Cooper) Olinger (1872-1974). She was the middle child of three, having an older sister named Barbara Ruth Olinger (1900-2000) and a younger brother named Dwight Stanton Olinger (1907-1984).

Reverend Stanton Olinger had a long association with the University of Kansas as both student and minister. He received degrees from KU in 1895 and 1916, as well as graduating from Highland College in Highland, Kansas and receiving his divinity doctorate from Princeton University.

The family moved around Nebraska, Iowa, and Kansas while the children were young, following Olinger's ministerial career. From 1911-1917, Olinger served as University Student Pastor at KU in Lawrence, Kansas. In 1920, the family moved to first Philadelphia and then New York for Olinger's work serving on a general board of education for the Presbyterian Church.

Anna Olinger and her children returned to Lawrence, Kansas after the death of Reverend Olinger in 1921. Anna Olinger served as house mother, acting associate director, and in other roles at Westminster Hall for several years. Westminster Hall was a Presbyterian meeting place and female student residential hall near KU campus.

Davida Olinger attended the University of Kansas, graduating with a bachelors in psychology in 1924. While studying, she trained horses to pay tuition. She later did some graduate study at KU and at the Colorado State Teachers College.

Davida Olinger had a varied career around the world. She was briefly head of girls' physical education at Wichita Falls, Texas's high school, where she organized a girls' pep squad. She traveled to Cuba in 1930 and was a teacher in Hamadan, Iran (Persia) from 1932-1935. Olinger worked briefly at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas later in the 1930s before joining the staff at Stephens College from 1938-1944. At the end of and after World War II, she worked for the U.S. Army in Japan and Korea, returning to Stephens College in 1948 and remaining there until 1967. She was then briefly in Reno County, Kansas.