Born in Layton, Utah,[3] Dibble attended the University of Utah, obtaining a B.A. in history in 1936. Dibble traveled to Mexico in the year preceding his graduation, and his experiences there shaped the direction of his future career as a Mesoamericanist scholar. Dibble enrolled at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) in Mexico City for postgraduate studies, completing a Master's degree in anthropology in 1938. Upon receiving his MA Dibble gained a teaching position at his alma mater in Utah commencing in 1939, where he would be based for the remainder of his long academic career. At the same time he pursued his doctoral studies at UNAM, and was awarded his PhD from UNAM in 1942. Dibble also undertook a year's post-doctoral work at Harvard, in 1943. In 1994, a festschrift entitled Chipping away on earth: studies in prehispanic and colonial Mexico in honor of Arthur J.O. Anderson and Charles E. Dibble[4] was published.