During Parr's brief second marriage, the family moved to southern California in 1969, returning to New York in the early 1970s. He was into vandalism and was smoking marijuana and driving at a very young age. While Parr was working as a CBS news reporter in New York during the 1960s, Noth often got into trouble. According to Noth, 'losing my father left a crater in my life' and he found father figures in many teachers and certain friends of his mother's. His parents separated when he was 9 or 10, and his father died in a car accident in 1966 when he was 11. Noth grew up in Connecticut while his parents worked in New York City. Noth's family settled in Stamford, Connecticut, when he was five. Charles came from a wealthy family in Chicago, and his mother had Irish ancestry that traces back to Knockbride in County Cavan. His father was Charles James Noth (1922–1966), a marketing-company vice president and insurance agent who was a naval aviator in World War II and served as Ensign on the USS Antietam during the Korean War. Parr was one of the first female correspondents for CBS News, and host of her own CBS talk show The Jeanne Parr Show.
Noth was born November 13, 1954, in Madison, Wisconsin, the youngest of three boys, to news reporter Jeanne Parr (1924–2016).