Celine Lemaire Bates was born May 28, 1935 in Yakima, Washington, the daughter of French Canadian immigrants Antonio Lemaire and Irene Marie Proulx Lemaire. The family lived in Moxee (or Moxee City), Washington, a small, primarily French Canadian community just to the north of the Yakima Reservation.

Antonio arrived in the United States from Saint-Bonaventure-Dupton, Quebec in 1926. He briefly returned to Quebec, this time Baie-du-Febvre, in February 1931 in order to marry Irene Marie Proulx. The couple would settle in Moxee a month later. When Celine was a teenager, the family left Moxee for Yakima, Washington.

Celine married her first husband, Larry Patnode, in 1957, with whom she had her son, Eldon. Celine and Larry divorced in 1970. She married her second husband, Thomas Bates, two years later.