Rhett & Link

McLaughlin was born in Macon, Georgia, and lived there until age three before moving to Thousand Oaks, California. In 1984, when he was five years old, his family relocated to Buies Creek, North Carolina, where his father, Jim McLaughlin, took a position as a law professor at Campbell University. He is the younger son of Jim and Diane McLaughlin and has an older brother named Cole.

In 2001, McLaughlin married Jessie Lane. The couple has two sons, Locke and Shepherd. Standing 6 feet 8 inches tall, he was an active basketball player in high school and held the school record for three-point field goals in a single season at Harnett Central High School.

McLaughlin first met his lifelong collaborator Link Neal in 1984 during first grade at Buies Creek Elementary School in North Carolina. The pair were kept in from recess after both wrote misspellings of profanities on their desks, spending the detention period coloring pictures of mythical creatures.

Their shared interest in comedy and performance began during childhood through amateur skits and fictional character interviews. At age fourteen, McLaughlin and Neal wrote an original screenplay titled Gutless Wonders and filmed select scenes before leaving the project unfinished. Later, while attending North Carolina State University, McLaughlin lived with Neal, studied civil engineering, and completed his degree before briefly working as an engineer for Black & Veatch.

After leaving his engineering position, McLaughlin partnered full time with Neal to pursue comedy and entertainment. They built early recognition by writing and producing comedic local television commercials and humorous musical parody videos for YouTube under the banner Rhett & Link. They also appeared together on the children's television program Jelly Telly as musical characters known as The Fabulous Bentley Brothers, and portrayed figures such as Donatello and the Wright brothers in Epic Rap Battles of History.

In January 2012, McLaughlin and Neal launched the daily talk and comedy series Good Mythical Morning. The program grew into one of the most widely viewed morning shows on YouTube, featuring taste tests, games, and comedic experiments, and spawned the narrative comedy series Buddy System.

Beyond daily video production, McLaughlin co-hosts the weekly conversational podcast Ear Biscuits alongside Neal. The show provides long-form personal discussions covering their creative processes, personal histories, and philosophical perspectives.

McLaughlin and Neal have co-authored several books, including Rhett and Link's Book of Mythicality, the novel The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek, and The Mythical Coloring Book. As entrepreneurs under their parent company Mythical Entertainment, they expanded their media footprint by producing culinary and pop-culture shows like Mythical Kitchen and acquiring the digital production brand Smosh in 2019.