Robert Emmett McGrath (June 13, 1932 – December 4, 2022) was an American actor, singer, and children's author best known for playing original human character and music teacher Bob Johnson on the educational television series Sesame Street from 1969 to 2016.
[10] In the mid-1960s, McGrath became a well-known recording artist in Japan, releasing a series of successful albums of Irish and other folk songs and ballads sung in Japanese.
[15][14] From 1969 to 2016, McGrath was a regular cast member on Sesame Street, playing the character of Bob Johnson.
A Noggin segment proclaimed the four decades of Bob when promoting Sesame Street on that network.
[19] McGrath said that his two favorite moments on Sesame Street were Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (a 1978 Christmas special that included a pastiche of "The Gift of the Magi"), and the 1983 sequence that candidly addressed the death of longtime character Mr. Hooper, played by his good friend Will Lee who had died the previous year.
[20] For 38 years, McGrath was a regular fixture on Telemiracle, a telethon broadcast annually on CTV outlets in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.
[27] McGrath's Sing Me a Story was nominated for the 7th Annual Independent Music Awards for children's Album of the Year.
[28] On April 10, 2010, he was the first recipient of the University of Michigan Men's Glee Club Lifetime Achievement Award.