Dr. Cottingham was born in Corpus Christi, Texas on July 13, 1937. When he was five years old, his family moved to Bandera, Texas and this was his home through college. He first lived on a ranch, then moved into town (population: Weekdays 50, Saturday night 5,000) to open a retail lumberyard.

For his last two years of high school, he lived with his older brother in a boarding house at the University of Texas and attended Austin High School, graduating in 1955. He then attended the University of Texas at Austin for three years before enrolling in Southwestern Medical School in Dallas in September 1958, graduating with his M.D. degree in June of 1962.

His rotating internship and anesthesia residency followed at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Beginning in August of 1965, he became Chief of Anesthesiology for four years at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas. While in the Navy, he began a private anesthesia practice at The Doctors Hospital in Corpus Christi, which lasted for thirty-three years, having retired in June 1998.

He and his wife, Annette Katz Cottingham, have six children and eight grandchildren.