Lilly was born in Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada, to a devoutly Christian family. Her father is a home economics teacher, and her mother is a beauty consultant. Lilly also has a younger sister, whom she has described as "the actor in the family". During her childhood, the family did not have a television.

Before leaving the city of Fort Saskatchewan at the age of 10, she attended three elementary schools. She briefly attended Fort Elementary, Rudolph Henning and James Mowat Elementary. During a phone interview with the local paper, The Record, Evangeline was quoted saying, "When I was a kid, the Fort was tiny. I could ride my bike at five years old from one end of town to the other ... To me Fort Saskatchewan holds a lot of really great memories. I just consider it a little happy hideaway."

Lilly served briefly as a foreign missionary and lived in a grass hut in the Philippines at the age of 18. She was offered a missionary post there for two years, an offer she near