His father, Nathaniel, an insurance salesman and English tutor from Latvia, and his mother, Fanny Naft, from present-day Ukraine, were both Jewish immigrants to the United States.
In an interview for the book The Great American Broadcast, Roberts told Leonard Maltin that he had started at the Brooklyn station in 1930, where his responsibilities included answering phones and sweeping the floors, in addition to on-air roles playing piano and reading poetry.
Despite his Errol Flynn-like good looks and the frequent broadcasts featuring his voice, as often as several times each day, few listeners knew who he was or would have recognized him in public.
[4] On television, he was the original announcer for Candid Camera and introduced popular soap operas Love of Life from 1951 to 1980, The Secret Storm from 1954 to 1974 and Texas from 1980 to 1982.
[3] On Jan Murray's comedy game show Dollar a Second, Robert's on-air duties included advertisements for sponsor Mogen David wines.
He had an off-screen role as an announcer in Woody Allen's 1987 film Radio Days, in which his son Tony Roberts appeared.
[2] Roberts died in Manhattan's NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital at age of 99, on June 19, 2009, due to pneumonia following a stroke he had suffered five years before his death.