Rivers was born in Vicenza, Italy on Caserma Ederle to Brenda J Rivers and Jerry B Rivers (deceased) who was an active duty US Army Service member stationed in Italy until 1975. He graduated from Fort campbell high school in 1992. In 1993 he enlisted in the US Army and attended Basic Training at Fort Jackson, SC. Rivers served on active duty from 17 March 1993 to 31 May 2013. He had a total of five deployments, two of which were combat tours to Iraq Baghdad while assigned with the 22nd Signal Brigade (2002-2003) also Bagram and Khandahar Afghanistan while under the 16th Sustainment Brigade command (2009-2010). Rivers' first role in a feature film was in Killing Winston Jones starring Danny Glover and Richard Dreyfuss.

Some of Rivers' earlier film credits include The Sacrament(2013) and Magic Mike XXL (2015). Rivers acted in TV series Fatal Attraction and Your Worst Nightmare. In 2016, Rivers was cast as Frank Colton in episode 1x16 of MacGyver. Rivers reprised the role of Frank Colton originally played by Cleavon Little, a member of The Coltons family of bounty Hunters who made frequent appearances in the original MacGyver television series. Rivers' more recent film credits include the suspense thriller Hangman (2017) starring Al Pacino and Karl Urban, also in Den of Thieves starring Gerard Butler and Curtis (50 Cent) Jackson.