O'Rourke's family had Irish roots. His father, Tommy O'Rourke, had travelled from the west coast of Ireland to London to attend the premiere of the Robert Flaherty documentary Man of Aran, in which he appeared as a shark hunter, and subsequently settled in the city. Steve was born in Willesden, a suburb of northwest London.
He trained as an accountant and entered the music industry through the Bryan Morrison Agency, which became affiliated with NEMS Enterprises. He began as a junior agent and bookkeeper, initially booking concert engagements for Pink Floyd while the band was still managed by Peter Jenner and Andrew King.
When Pink Floyd parted company with founding member Syd Barrett in 1968, Jenner and King chose to stay with Barrett while O'Rourke stepped in to manage the remaining band. It was a decision that would define the next thirty-five years of his professional life.
In the early 1970s he left NEMS and established his own company, EMKA Productions, named after his first daughter Emma Kate. Through EMKA he managed the band throughout their most commercially and artistically significant years, including the period that produced The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, and The Wall. One of his most consequential professional acts was negotiating the band's split with bassist and primary songwriter Roger Waters in the mid-1980s, allowing the remaining members to continue under the Pink Floyd name.
He also managed other artists during this period, among them the band Kokomo.
O'Rourke's interest in motorsport went beyond spectatorship. He competed in endurance racing at a serious amateur level, financing his participation through EMKA and driving alongside professional and semi-professional partners.
His first Le Mans appearance came in 1979, when he drove a Ferrari 512 BB and finished twelfth overall — a creditable result in one of the world's most demanding endurance races. He returned to La Sarthe in 1980, where the event provided one of the more dramatic incidents of his racing life. A tyre failure at close to 200 mph on the Mulsanne Straight destroyed the rear tail section of his Ferrari. Rather than retire, O'Rourke purchased the spare tail panel from a sister car that had already withdrawn from the race in the pit lane, fitted it, and returned to the circuit to take a twenty-third place finish. The improvised repair was a measure of both his determination and the resourcefulness that characterised endurance racing in that era.
In 2000, O'Rourke entered the 24 Hours of Daytona under the EMKA Racing banner. He drove a new Porsche 911 GT3 R alongside five-time Le Mans winner Derek Bell, Stephen Day, and Tim Sugden. The entry retired in the third hour after sustaining accident damage.
O'Rourke suffered a stroke and died in Miami, Florida, on 30 October 2003, just four weeks after his sixty-third birthday. His death ended a management relationship with Pink Floyd that had lasted thirty-five years and spanned the full arc of the band's commercial dominance.
O'Rourke occupies a distinctive place in the intersection of rock music and motorsport. As Pink Floyd's manager he shaped the commercial and legal framework around one of the best-selling recording acts in history. As a racing driver he was unusual in that his participation was not merely promotional: he drove competitive machinery at genuine endurance events, took meaningful finishes, and funded an independent team. EMKA Racing existed as a real operation, not a vanity exercise, and his Le Mans result in 1979 placed him inside the top fifteen at one of the most contested grids in sportscar history for that period.