Born in Greensboro, North Carolina, Kathy Dick attended Alamance High School, which consolidated into Southeast Guilford High School in 1962. She graduated from Southeast Guilford in 1963 and went on to earn a degree in education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1967.

Kathy began her professional career at Piedmont Natural Gas Company in Greensboro, where she worked for two years before moving into education. In 1968, she was hired by Ragsdale High School as a Home Economics teacher.

During her first year at Ragsdale, Kathy attended her first wrestling match and was immediately captivated by the sport. Noticing her presence and enthusiasm, wrestling coach Mike Raybon invited her to assist with the team and help organize the sectional tournament hosted by Ragsdale. This marked the beginning of a more than 50-year legacy of service to high school wrestling.

Kathy founded and sponsored the Ragsdale Wrestlerette program, a group that not only supported the team from the sidelines but also played a vital role in running meets and tournaments. Under her leadership, the Wrestlerettes helped raise $10,000 in the mid-1970s to renovate the school’s wrestling room.

After earning a master’s degree in counseling in 1977, Kathy became a counselor at Ragsdale in 1979. Although this new role required her to step away from sponsoring the Wrestlerettes, she remained actively involved in wrestling. Her contributions included organizing the NCHSAA State Wrestling Championships and serving for twenty years on the Board of Directors for the North Carolina Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame.

During the 1986–87 season, North Carolina divided its wrestling championships into three classifications, each held at separate venues. Kathy played a key role in bringing the championships together under one roof. Alongside Mike Raybon, she was instrumental in moving the tournament to the Greensboro Coliseum in 19991, an effort that proved to be a major success.  In 2005, Kathy Dick became the first woman inducted into the North Carolina Chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, cementing her legacy as a trailblazer and advocate for wrestling in North Carolina.