Ginnaven graduated from Southside High School and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Memphis.
During the year, Robert had appeared in his second and last television show called Dangerous Curves in one episode as Matthew Carlson.
Ginnaven also had a small but noticeable appearance in White Lightning, where he plays a friend of Ned Beatty's character Sheriff J.C. Connors.
Ginnaven moved back to Memphis in 1958, where he met his first wife, Ila Verne (née Crews) at an open-call audition being held by the local PBS station.
A few years later, Bob remarried Ann Vickers who was at the time the director of sales at KATV, the same TV station Ginnaven, Jr. had started at when he first moved to Little Rock.