He was born in Ogden, Utah to Stanely and Adeline (Smith) Stevens and educated in LDS-affiliated schools in Salt Lake City, Utah. He spent much of his childhood in the household of his grandfather Orson Smith. At the death of his parents in 1924, he spent the next 3 years on an LDS mission in Switzerland and Belgium. He attended the University of Utah from 1927 to 1929 and Stanford University for the next two years, graduating with an A.B. in psychology from Stanford in 1931. He married Maxine Leonard in 1930 and had a son, Peter Smith, in 1936.