Previous studies show that Kalman filter (KF)-based dynamic response reconstruction of a structure has distinct advantages in the aspects of combining the system model with limited measurement information and dealing with system model errors and measurement Gaussian noises. However, because the recursive KF aims to achieve a least-squares estimate of state vector by minimizing a quadratic criterion, observation outliers could dramatically deteriorate the estimator’s performance and considerably reduce the response reconstruction accuracy. This study addresses the KF-based online response reconstruction of a structure in the presence of observation outliers. The outlier-robust Kalman filter (OKF), in which the outlier is discerned and reweighted iteratively to achieve the generalized maximum likelihood (ML) estimate, is used instead of KF for online dynamic response reconstruction. The influences of process noise and outlier duration to response reconstruction are investigated in the numerical study of a simple 5-story frame structure. The experimental work on a simply-supported overhanging steel beam is conducted to testify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results demonstrate that compared with the KF-based response reconstruction, the proposed OKF-based method is capable of dealing with the observation outliers and producing more accurate response construction in presence of observation outliers.