Raised in the Northeast and Kentucky, Kalember was encouraged to try acting as a career by a high school teacher. After earning both undergraduate and graduate degrees in theater, she joined the company of Baltimore's Center Stage in 1980. After a few years of working on stage and in TV commercials, Kalember was cast as the high-powered, newscaster Merrill Vochek in the 1983 premiere of ABC's soap opera "Loving". She left at the end of her initial three-year contract when CBS offered her the lead in the short-lived "Kay O'Brien" (1986), a primetime drama series about a surgical resident balancing her professional and personal lives. Kalember returned to New York and made her Broadway debut opposite Robert Joy in "The Nerd". She then joined the cast of ABC's "thirtysomething" in 1989 as Susannah Hart, lover of Gary (Peter Horton), and eventually the mother of his child. Kalember left the show in 1991 to join the ensemble of "Sisters" as Georgie who suffered through much of the tear-jerking melodrama of the ongoing story of four sisters in Winnetka, Illinois. The storyline that brought Kalember the most attention was her character's agreeing to act as surrogate mother for her younger sister. Trapped in the wreckage of an automobile accident, she was forced to give birth as her family watched. The popularity of "Sisters" translated into starring roles for her in several TV projects that allowed her to demonstrate her range and ability including "Shattered Truth: The Shari Karney Story" (NBC, 1993) and the miniseries "Degree of Guilt" (NBC, 1995).
Kalember's work on the big screen has been somewhat more sporadic. She had supporting roles in "Fletch Lives" (1989) and "Jacob's Ladder" (1990), and perhaps a better showcase in "Big Girls Don't Cry, They Get Even" (1992), in which she was the only voice of sanity in Joan Micklin Silver's comic study of the dysfunctional extended family from hell. In the straight-to-video "A Far Off Place" (1993), Kalember traveled to Zimbabwe to co-star as Reese Witherspoon's mother. Since 1986, Kalember has been married to actor Daniel Gerroll who appeared as her psychiatrist-lover on "Sisters".