Emma McLaughlin was born in 1973 and Nicola Kraus was born in 1974. McLaughlin was born in Elmira, New York, and raised in Rochester, New York, where her father was a philosophy professor and her mother owned a landscape design company. She attended Connecticut College before transferring to New York University (NYU). Kraus was raised on Park Avenue in New York City's Upper East Side. Her parents owned a bookstore, Ursus Books and Prints, which specialized in art and rare books. Like Nanny in the The Nanny Diaries: A Novel, Kraus attended Chapin, an exclusive prep school in New York City, as well as Brown University before transferring to NYU.

McLaughlin and Kraus met while they were both seniors at NYU. They realized they shared the experience of working as part-time nannies and had many funny stories about it. Before both women graduated from NYU, McLaughlin and Kraus...