Born and raised in Minnesota, Marisa Coughlan grew up in both Minneapolis and St. Paul, as her father lived in one place and her mother the other. After graduating from high school in 1992, she moved west to attend the University of Southern California where in 1996 she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in French and studied in Paris during her junior year. She married Stephen Wallack, whom she had known since they were teenagers in Minneapolis, at a private estate in Pasadena, California on November 1, 2008. They had their first child, a son named Finn, in May 2009.