Keshvari was born in July 1953 in a middle-class family in Kiakola, Mazandaran Province, Iran. His parents were from Borujerd, Lorestan. His father, Gholamhossein, had been employed in the Imperial Iranian Gendarmerie, and had to migrate to various towns because of his job. His mother, Fatemeh Silakhori, was a religious and pro-Revolution woman. He spent his primary school and the three years of his high school in Kiakola, Mazanderan and then spent his high school in Qanad High School in Sarepol-e Talar village in Babol, Mazanderan. He passed the Iranian University Entrance Exam, but poverty prevented him from studying at normal universities, so he went to Imam Ali University, which was a free, military university.