Mary Jean Fryar was born and raised in the Boston, Massachusetts area. She graduated from Wellesley College with a BA in Psychology. After college, she worked in campus law enforcement and in Corporate Security for New Balance Athletic Shoes, Inc. before joining the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 1985 as a Special Agent. She served in the Albany, Washington, Boston and the Santa Rosa Resident Agency of San Francisco field offices. While in the Washington Field Office, Agent Fryar was detailed to the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California for two years to study the Vietnamese language. Agent Fryar retired in 2006 and moved to Southern California where she pursued a real estate career before moving to Park City in 2019.