Bobbie Wygant Biography – Bobbie Wygant Wiki
Bobbie Wygant is an American entertainment reporter, critic, talk show host, and an Emmy Award-winning television legend. She also works at NBC as a freelance reporter. Her seventy-year career at WBAP-TV -NBC 5 kicked off in 1948, two weeks prior to the station going on air. She is a founding member of the National Broadcast Film Critics Association and was honored by them with their “Critic’s Critic Award” in 2000 in Los Angeles. In 2004, she was inducted into the elite Gold Circle of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences in Houston for her fifty years of contributions to television broadcasting. She is the 17th American broadcaster to be elected into its prestigious Gold Circle for 50 years of broadcasting achievement. In 2014 the Alliance for Women In Media honored her with their Gracie Award for Outstanding Reporter/Correspondent.
She was born in Lafayette, Indiana, and came to Texas with a degree in broadcasting and psychology from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. In her early years, she did live game shows, and commercials and produced and hosted a live talk show for 16 years. She is noted for her celebrity interviews with everyone from Bob Hope to Bradley Cooper. She notably was the first woman in the Southwest to host a general interest talk show and the first broadcaster in the Southwest to present theater and movie reviews on television.
In 2018 Bobbie wrote her memoir Talking to the Stars: Bobbie Wygant’s Seventy Years in Television. Her most challenging on-air experience was November 22, 1963, when her 30-minute talk show was interrupted six or seven times with bulletins about the John F. Kennedy assassination. Following each announcement she was instructed to “pick up where you left off.” She did.
Local and regional awards for Wygant include the Texas Arts Alliance’s award for outstanding coverage of the arts in 1978 and her being named the Zonta Club of Fort Worth’s executive woman of the year in 1980. Nationally, in 2000, the National Broadcast Film Critics Association presented Wygant with the Critic’s Critic Award. She received the Emmy Gold Circle in 2004, honoring people with longevity in the television industry. In 2014, she won the Gracie Award for Outstanding Reporter/Correspondent from the Alliance for Women In Media. She began working only part-time in 2002, having worked full-time for over 50 years up until then. She is a recipient of Alpha Xi Delta’s Woman of Distinction Award.
Bobbie Wygant Age
She was born Roberta Frances Connolly on November 22, 1926, in Lafayette, Indiana, USA.
Bobbie Wygant Husband
On June 28, 1947, she married her late husband, Philip Warren Wygant at age 20. They had met at Purdue when she worked at the radio station at which he was the program supervisor. He died on April 25, 1986, at the age of 60 due to liver disease. Besides their professional activities, they operated a tree farm in east Texas. The couple did not have any children.
Bobbie Wygant Children
The couple did not have any children.
Bobbie Wygant Family
She is the granddaughter of Mr. and Mrs. Robert E. Connolly, she was born in Lafayette, Indiana. She has two younger brothers, Gordon and Carl Connolly. Their mother died of cancer when she was 16 years old. She remained a full-time student while caring for her mother during her extended illness, after which she maintained the home for her father and her brothers. Her mother’s death discouraged her from pursuing a career as a doctor, which she had originally intended.
Bobbie Wygant Book
She authored the book: Talking to the Stars: Bobbie Wygant’s Seventy Years in Television.
