Jones was born in Los Angeles, California. His family moved back to North Little Rock, Arkansas in 1945. Jones’ father J.W. “Pat” Jones (1920–1997) and mother Arminta Pearl Clark Jones (1922–2012) married in 1941. They owned two branches of Pat’s Super Market in the Rose City neighborhood of North Little Rock. Jones was a running back at North Little Rock High School, graduating in 1960.

After his graduation, Jones’ parents moved to Springfield, Missouri, where Pat was president and chairman of Modern Security Life Insurance Co. The company, which an advertisement billed as a “one in a million” company, saw its assets increase from $440,299.76 in its first statement in 1961 to $6,230,607 in 1965. After graduating from the University of Arkansas, Jerral W. Jones was listed as an executive vice president. With the success of the company, the Joneses assembled the 5,500-acre Buena Vista Ranch east of Springfield in Rogersville, Missouri in the Ozark Mountains. In 1971, after selling the insurance company, the couple carved out 400 acres of their ranch to start Buena Vista Animal Paradise, where tourists could visit exotic animals (now Wild Animal Safari in Strafford, Missouri, just south of Interstate 44).

According to an interview with Jones on HBO, after graduating from college in 1965, he borrowed a million dollars from Jimmy Hoffa’s Teamsters union to open up a string of Shakey’s Pizza Parlor restaurants in Missouri. When that venture failed, Jones was given a job at his father’s insurance company Modern Security Life of Springfield, Missouri. He received his master’s degree in business in 1970. After several other unsuccessful business ventures (including an attempt, again using Teamsters money, to purchase the American Football League’s San Diego Chargers in 1967), he began an oil and gas exploration business in Arkansas, Jones Oil and Land Lease, which became successful. His privately held company currently does natural resource prospecting.

On February 25, 1989, Jones purchased the Cowboys from H.R. “Bum” Bright for $140 million (equivalent to $292.5 million in 2020). Soon after the purchase, he fired longtime coach Tom Landry, to that point the only coach in the team’s history, in favor of his old teammate at Arkansas, Jimmy Johnson. A few months later, he fired longtime general manager Tex Schramm, and assumed complete control over football matters.

After a slow start under Jones and Johnson (the first season under Jones, a 1–15 finish, remains second only to the team’s inaugural season in terms of futility), Jones quickly built a team that is often reckoned to be the best NFL franchise of the 1990s. The Cowboys won Super Bowl XXVII in the 1992 season, as well as Super Bowl XXVIII the following year in the 1993 season. Johnson then departed and was replaced by Barry Switzer, who also went on to win Super Bowl XXX in the 1995 season.

Jones also appeared as himself in a 1996 episode of the TV show Coach and in a 2007 television commercial for Diet Pepsi MAX, which also featured then Cowboys head coach Wade Phillips and quarterback Tony Romo.

Jones was the inspiration for the character Baxter Cain (Robert Vaughn), owner of the Dallas Felons, in the 1998 film BASEketball. He had a brief cameo appearance as himself in the 1998 made-for-television reunion movie Dallas: War of the Ewings.

In 2008, Jones formed a partnership with Yankee Global Enterprises to create Legends Hospitality, a food, beverage, merchandise, retail and stadium operations corporation serving entertainment venues.

Jones was fined $25,000 by the NFL for publicly criticizing referee Ed Hochuli after Hochuli made a call in a game between the San Diego Chargers and the Denver Broncos on September 14, 2008. Jones made comments both to the press and on his radio show, saying Hochuli was one of the most criticized officials in the NFL. This was Jones’ first fine by the NFL.

In 2009, Jones was fined $100,000 for violating a gag order on labor issues, commenting that revenue sharing was “on its way out”. Commissioner Roger Goodell had issued a gag order for all owners and team executives from discussing any aspect of the pending labor issues. Jones “crossed the line”, drawing a “six-figure” fine, sources said, as the commissioner distributed a memo to all 32 owners, along with a reminder that the gag order remains in effect. Goodell did not disclose the specific amount of Jones’ fine in the memo.

He appeared as himself in the seventh season of the HBO series Entourage in 2010, in an episode of the TNT incarnation of Dallas titled “Truth and Consequences”, which aired on July 4, 2012, in a series of commercials for the 2012 season of ESPN’s Monday Night Football, and in the season 4 premiere of The League. In 2013, Jones narrated a documentary film on former teammate and business partner Jim Lindsey.

Jones also appears in a 2013 Pepsi commercial, walking into an elevator filled with three men wearing New York Giants apparel, who look at him with discontent.

Jones revealed in July 2015 at press conference before Cowboys training camp that he had undergone hip replacement surgery, joking that he wouldn’t start the season on the PUP list.

Jones became involved in the St. Louis Rams move back to Los Angeles with Stan Kroenke in 2016. He was instrumental in brokering a deal between Stan Kroenke, San Diego Chargers owner Dean Spanos, and Oakland Raiders owner Mark Davis to ensure that Kroenke’s SoFi Stadium plan passed which it did via a 30-2 owners vote in favor. Jones’ support and role in the negotiations has been criticized by some fans and sports media in St. Louis. Jerry Jones was also a supporter and key proponent of the Oakland Raiders move to Las Vegas to play at Allegiant Stadium.

The 2018 NFL season was Jones’ 30th as Cowboys owner – more than the number of seasons as the combined tenures of his predecessors.