Born in New York City, the fourth of five sons, when he was 6 years old Kevin Devine’s family moved to the largely Irish community of Inwood at the northern tip of Manhattan. After elementary school there, he entered the 9th grade at Saint Peter’s in Baltimore, Maryland, a prep seminary school for the Paulist Father’s. While completing high school, he took classes at nearby Saint Charles College. He earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Saint Paul’s College in Washington, D.C., and was ordained a Paulist Catholic priest in 1956. After ordination he served two years at the Paulist Center in Boston, before returning home as associate pastor of The Church of the Good Shepherd until 1962, when he was commissioned a U.S. Army chaplain. He served 31 years of military service with posts in the United States, Germany, and Italy, and from 1969 to 1970 served an 18-month tour of duty in Vietnam. When he retired from the Army in 1993, he returned to Inwood to pastor there again until 2006.