Born in 1935 in Newburgh, New York, to Dominick Ferraro, an Italian immigrant, and Antonetta Ferraro, Geraldine Ferraro graduated from Marymount Manhattan College in 1956. Attending Fordham Law School, she graduated in 1960, and married businessman John A. Zaccaro.

During the 1960s, Ferraro raised her children, practicing law occasionally at her husband's real estate office. In 1974, with the help of cousin Nicholas Ferraro, then district attorney of Queens she got a job as an assistant district attorney, heading a victims' bureau dealing with sex crimes, child abuse and crimes against the elderly.

Ferraro sought the Democratic nomination for her congressional district in 1978 and won the primary, then went on to defeat her Republican opponent and won reelection in 1980 and 1982. In the House, Ferraro served on committees such as Post Office and Civil Service, Public Works and Transportation, and Budget. In January 1984, she became chair of the Democratic PlatformCommittee.

At the Democratic National Convention in July 1984, she became the first woman vice-presidential nominee of a major party when presidential nominee Walter Mondale selected Ferraro as his running mate. Mondale's decision was intended to make use of the so-called "gender gap" in voting patterns, and Democrats also hoped that Catholic Italian-American Ferraro would appeal to blue-collar voters who had been leaving the party for the Republicans .

A media furor over whether Ferraro would reveal her family finances, over and beyond the income tax statements required by law, requiring her husband's to publicly discuss his business dealings before the press, did not help the Democratic ticket.

Republicans Ronald Reagan and George Bush won the 1984 election with 58.8 percent of the popular vote, sweeping the electoral college. Ferraro returned to the practice of law in New York after the election.