Her sister is the actress Missy Gold, who appeared on Benson. Her stage name "Gold" comes from her stepfather Harry Gold (n� Goldstein). Her sister Missy also shares the birth name Fisher.

She is also famous for her highly publicized battle with anorexia nervosa, which almost killed her. She had suffered eating disorders earlier in her youth, and the trauma from her past experiences came back when Carol was made fun of on the show by her brothers for being "too fat". In 1991, she started starving herself and lost a massive amount of weight that year, to the point that she was admitted to a hospital in early 1992. She was written out of the show for most of the final season. After a few more years, she overcame her anorexia, married, and had three sons, Sage, Bailey, and Aiden.

In 2004, she was a contestant on the program Celebrity Mole 2: Yucatan.

Gold was arrested for driving under the influence on September 3, 2004. Her husband, Roby Marshall, and two of her children were injured, one seriously, but her newborn infant was not. She posted $50,000 bail the following day. Gold originally pleaded innocent to the charges but later changed her plea to guilty and was sentenced to one month in a work release program, 240 hours of community service and three years' probation. Gold made an appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, explaining her side of the story and an explanation to what happened on what she proclaims as "the worst night of her life". Her other great claim to fame is that her father in-law Robert O. Marshall spent nearly 22 years on death row in New Jersey before having his sentence overturned in May 2006. The murders were dramatised in a book Blind Faith by Joe McGinniss and made into a mini-series for television.