bob and ray

Bob Elliott was a disk jockey at Boston’s WHDH when he met newscaster Ray Goulding in 1946. The two men discovered an instant rapport, a gift for improvisation, and a keen understanding of the absurd. So began a radio partnership that would last for forty years.

Almost immediately, WHDH gave the new team a daily show, Matinee With Bob & Ray. In July 1951, Bob and Ray left Boston for New York. Over the next three decades, The Bob and Ray Show appeared on NBC, CBS, the Mutual Broadcasting System, and New York stations WINS, WOR and WHN. Their last series, a weekly program for National Public Radio, ran from 1982 to 1987.

Bob and Ray created and gave voice to a universe of wonderful, offbeat characters, including domestic advisor Mary McGoon, adenoidal reporter Wally Ballou and incompetent showman Barry Campbell. The duo also parodied radio and television with spoofs that often outlasted the original source material, including Mr. Trace, Keener Than Most Persons; Jack Headstrong, The All-American American and the soap operas One Fella’s Family and Mary Backstage, Noble Wife.

Ray Goulding died on March 24, 1990.

Bob Elliott died on February 2, 2016.

The Bob and Ray Show was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1995.