Owen dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. Owen went back to high school and graduated from Fort Payne High in 1969. In the late 1960s, Owen and his cousin, Teddy Gentry, began playing music together. They recruited another cousin, Jeff Cook, to form a band, which they called Wildcountry. Their first public performance was at a high school talent show, which they won.

Owen's music career was put on hiatus as he earned a degree from Jacksonville State University, where he helped establish the Delta Epsilon chapter of Pi Kappa Phi. Upon his graduation, however, the three cousins moved into an apartment in Anniston, Alabama and by 1973 were pursuing a full-time music career. In 1980, the band, now called Alabama, were signed to a recording contract by RCA Records and quickly reached country superstardom. For the next twenty-two years, Alabama had a tremendous impact on country music, attracting a younger group of listeners, crossing over into pop radio, and paving the way for groups to be successful on country radio.

Alabama released 21 gold, platinum, and multi-platinum albums, 42 singles that topped the charts at #1, and sold over 73 million records in total. They have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and were named the Academy of Country Music's Artist of the Decade in 1989, and the Recording Industry Association of America's Country Group of the Century in 1999.

In May 2002, the band announced their retirement during the Academy of Country Music Awards telecast. For the rest of 2002 and 2003, they performed throughout the country in their American Farewell Tour. In 2005, the band was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Owen lives on his own cattle ranch outside Fort Payne. He currently serves as an at-large member of the Board of Trustees of Jacksonville State University. In 2007, he was a judge on Season 5 of the country talent show Nashville Star.

Owen took over hosting duties for Country Gold, the Saturday night classic country request program on Dial Global, beginning July 21, 2012. The show was reformatted upon Owen's arrival, switching to a pre-recorded format (the show's predecessor, Westwood One's Country Gold Saturday Night, was originally live; requests are handled, as they had been with Owen's immediate predecessor, by an answering machine) voicetracked from Owen's home, drifting to a more open-ended "traditional country" format (one that includes more 1990s songs and even some 2000s songs along with country-pop tunes more commonly associated with the classic hits format while moving away from the core songs of the classic country format) and shortening the show from five hours to four.