Keeble grew up in his father's house at 2114 West End Avenue in Nashville, across the street from the Vanderbilt University Campus— within sight of Kissam Hall. His early schooling was at the Wallace University School, which was a block from his house. His high school was Montgomery Bell Academy, where his father had attended; it was a straight three-mile trolley ride down West End Avenue. He graduated in 1921 and went on to Vanderbilt University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in engineering in 1924. He studied architecture at the University of Pennsylvania with Paul Philippe Cret, a Frenchman who had trained in Lyon and Paris in the Beaux-Arts tradition. This association influenced Keeble to spend the summer of 1926 studying in France at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes Artistiques at Fontainebleau. The next year he studied with Georges Gromort at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He then traveled through France and Italy observing architectural styles before returning to the University of Pennsylvania to complete his architecture degree in 1928.
