O'Boyle was born in Charlotte, North Carolina. Growing up, her father's work for Xerox had the family moving almost every two years from New York to England until they finally settled back in Charlotte, where her father started a specialty advertising company called Timeplanner Calendars.
O'Boyle graduated from West Charlotte High School in 1981 and studied journalism at East Carolina University.
She is currently a lead anchor for WBTV News 3 in her hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina, where she anchors the weekly report "Stretching Your Dollar." O'Boyle previously was the anchorwoman for the TV shows A Current Affair and Extra. O'Boyle's six brothers eventually took over the family business, grew it to a multimillion-dollar company, and sold it in summer 2007. In her freshman year at East Carolina University, O'Boyle helped restart the campus radio station WZMB. She was also hired to do morning cut-ins at the NBC affiliate in nearby Washington N.C. station WITN. She later went to work for WNCT in Greenville on weekends.
O'Boyle eventually left school before graduating, and was hired by WECT in Wilmington, North Carolina, where she worked as a nightside reporter and was promoted to noon anchor. Her next stop was WMAZ in Macon, Georgia, as co-anchor and reporter. She left that station to become main anchor for the CBS affiliate, KREM 2 in Spokane, Washington.
In 1990, at age 27, O'Boyle was recruited to replace Maury Povich on the nationally syndicated A Current Affair. O'Boyle saw viewership rise by 15 percent, and she rated a higher Q score than any other newswoman on TV at the time. O'Boyle hosted A Current Affair until 1995, when she was replaced by Penny Daniels.
In 1995, she became weekend anchor and reporter of Los Angeles-based TV series Extra. O'Boyle left Extra in 1996, and hosted her own talk show In Person, which ran for one season (at which point she would return to Extra and become co-anchor until September 1997). In 1999, O'Boyle left television to be a full-time mother.
In 2004, she returned to her hometown to join WBTV. She played herself in a 1998 episode of The Larry Sanders Show, in which she interviewed Garry Shandling's lead character.
