Rachel Annabelle Riley

Born in Rochford, Essex, to an accountant father Christopher and his wife Celia (she also has a younger brother, Alex), Riley describes herself as a "non-religious Jew". Riley was brought up in the Thorpe Bay area of Southend-on-Sea and was educated at the independent Thorpe Hall School, and Southend High School for Girls, a grammar school, where she obtained four As at A-Level. She then studied mathematics at Oriel College, Oxford, gaining an upper second-class honours degree.
Before she appeared on Countdown, she did an internship in The City at Deutsche Bank during a university vacation, but did not like the experience, explaining that she "..simply didn’t like the environment..", and after university worked as an analyst for a price-comparison website.