Rivers was born in Vicenza, Italy on Caserma Ederle to Brenda J Rivers and Jerry B Rivers (deceased) who was an active duty US Army service member stationed in Italy until 1975. He graduated from Fort campbell high school in 1992. In 1993 he enlisted in the US Army and attended Basic Training at Fort Jackson, SC. Rivers served on active duty from 17 March 1993 to 31 May 2013. He had a total of five deployments, two of which were combat tours to Iraq Baghdad while assigned with the 22nd Signal Brigade (2002-2003) also Bagram and Khandahar Afghanistan while under the 16th Sustainment Brigade command (2009-2010). Rivers' first role in a feature film was in Killing Winston Jones starring Danny Glover and Richard Dreyfuss.
