By age 14, Dorsey had become interested in dispatch routing.
In his younger days, Dorsey worked occasionally as a fashion model. He was raised Catholic, and his uncle is a Catholic priest in Cincinnati. His father worked for a company that developed mass spectrometers and his mother was a homemaker. He is of part Italian descent on his mother's side. Louis, Missouri, the son of Tim and Marcia (née Smith) Dorsey.