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Post was born Emily Price in Baltimore, Maryland, possibly in October 1872 the precise date is unknown.^[2][a] Her father was the architect Bruce Price and her mother was Josephine (Lee) Price of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. After being educated at home in her early years, Price attended Miss Graham's finishing school in New York after her family moved there.

The New York Times' Dinitia Smith reports, in her review of Laura Claridge's 2008 biography of Post.

Emily was tall, pretty and spoiled. [...] She grew up in a world of grand estates, her life governed by carefully delineated rituals like the cotillion with its complex forms and its dances - the Fan, the Ladies Mocked, Mother Goose - called out in dizzying turns by the dance master.