O’Kane re­ceived his AB de­gree from Ohio Wes­ley­an Un­i­ver­si­ty in 1852, and his AM de­gree in 1855. Im­me­di­ate­ly up­on grad­u­a­tion, he ac­cept­ed a po­si­tion there as Tu­tor of Ma­the­ma­tics. Even though he was on­ly a tu­tor, the stu­dents al­ways re­ferred to him as “Pro­fess­or.” In addition, in re­cog­ni­tion of his mu­sic­al abil­i­ties, O’Kane was for years the mu­sic­al pre­cen­tor in the dai­ly cha­pel de­vo­tions. He al­so or­gan­ized and ran a chor­al so­ci­e­ty at the school, and was the first mu­sic­al in­struct­or in the Ohio Wes­ley­an Fe­male Coll­ege.

In 1857, O’Kane be­came a school prin­ci­pal in Cin­cin­na­ti, Ohio. In 1864, he went to work for the Phil­lip Phil­lips pi­a­no com­pa­ny. He stayed with the com­pa­ny un­til it moved to New York in 1867, at which time he moved to Del­a­ware, Ohio, and be­came a tra­vel­ing sales­man for the Smith Amer­i­can Or­gan Com­pa­ny of Bos­ton, Mass­a­chu­setts. Dur­ing that time he vi­sit­ed con­fer­enc­es and Sun­day school con­ven­tions, and be­came well known through­out the area.

O’Kane’s works in­clude:

• Fresh Leaves, 1868
• Joy to the World, with John Swe­ney & C. C. McCabe (Cin­cin­na­ti, Ohio: Hitch­cock and Wald­en, 1879)
• Dew Drops of Sac­red Song
• Songs of Wor­ship
• Every Sab­bath
• Jasper and Gold (Cin­cin­na­ti, Ohio: Hitch­cock & Wal­den, 1877)
• Dew of Her­mon
• Forward Songs and Hymns
• Redeemer’s Praise
• Glorious Things
• Morning Stars
• Selected An­thems, with his son, Ed­ward
• Joy to the World, 1878
• Songs of Re­deem­ing Love No. 2, with C. C. Mc­Cabe, John Swe­ney & Will­iam Kirk­pat­rick (Phil­a­del­phia, Penn­syl­van­ia: John J. Hood, 1887)