Born May 16, 1947 in Louisville, Kentucky and a graduate of the University of Louisville, Bob Edwards began his career in radio as a newscaster for Indiana station WHEL, New Albany, followed by a stint in Korea with the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service. He first came to Washington, D.C. in August, 1971 for graduate school; he earned his M.A. in Communication from American University, where he was mentored by Edward Bliss Jr., writer-producer for Edward R. Murrow, and later the first news editor of The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. While working on his degree, he worked at WTOP-AM, Washington, D.C., an all-news CBS affiliate. At 25, he moved to Mutual. After being dismissed ("I'm a big union guy. That didn't go over well with the Mutual Broadcasting System, now defunct."), he joined National Public Radio in 1974 as an associate news producer and the network’s only newscaster, where later that year Edwards was asked to join Susan Stamberg as co-host of a new NPR program, All Things Considered, originally an arts program which under the two became the news program known today.

In 1979, NPR launched Morning Edition, a morning companion show in the style of All Things Considered. After an "atrocious" pilot for member stations was fed to affiliates about 10 days before the show's scheduled debut, NPR replaced the show's hosts and the main producers responsible and asked Edwards to co-host the show for the first 30 days until a permanent replacement could be found. Reminiscing about the show's beginnings, Edwards told Current, "They drafted me and Barbara Hoctor, who was working on Weekend All Things Considered. We were used to that two-host mode -- Susan and I had done it for years on All Things Considered - so that's all we knew to do. I got into it and enjoyed it. About four months into it, Barbara decided to leave; she had a sick child. And we realized this was a different kind of program, a modular program that stations were cutting into and out of, and they had local hosts. So there were too many voices. So we decided just one host."

For longtime NPR listeners, Bob's weekly conversations with Red Barber are legendary. In 1981, the former Brooklyn Dodgers radio announcer came out of retirement when he accepted sports producer Ketzel Levine's offer to become a regular contributor and made his debut with Edwards on Morning Edition. The conversations were supposed to be about sports - but they blossomed into something much more. "Red 'n Bob" talked about everything from human nature to the springtime camillas in Red's backyard. Their conversations went on to charm, delight, and surprise listeners for more than a decade, until Red's death in 1992. (Edwards captured that experience and his friendship with Barber in his 1993 book, Fridays with Red.)

Edwards’s probing interview style and insightful commentary have earned him numerous laurels. In 1984, he was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which said in part, "Every station that carries Morning Edition can attest to Bob Edwards' extraordinary rapport with listeners...In terms of his editorial leadership and on-air performance, Bob has created a standard for the industry." Edwards won his first Gabriel Award from the National Catholic Association of Broadcasters in 1987 for a Morning Edition story entitled Bill of Sale: A Black Heritage, and again in 1990 for Born Drunk, a five-part Morning Edition series about Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. In 1995, Edwards shared in NPR's Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for Changing of the Guard: The Republican Revolution, given to NPR for its coverage of the first 100 days of the 104th Congress. In 1999 Edwards was awarded the George Foster Peabody Award for broadcasting excellence; in the award notification, the Peabody committee described Morning Edition as, "two hours of daily in-depth news and entertainment expertly helmed by a man who embodies the essence of excellence in radio. His reassuring and authoritative voice is often the first many Americans hear each day. His is a rare radio voice: informed but never smug; intimate but never intrusive; opinionated but never dismissive. Mr. Edwards does not merely talk, he listens." In 2004, he received the second annual AFTRA Media and Entertainment Excellence Awards from the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists during its National Plenary. For his lifetime body of work, in 2004 Bob Edwards was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in Chicago, joining his friend Red Barber and his idol, Edward R. Murrow.

Throughout his career at NPR, Edwards conducted more than 20,000 interviews, including talks with many of the most important newsmakers of our time, leaders in the entertainment industry, powerful politicians, and ordinary people with extraordinary stories to tell. When asked by JournalismJobs which interview stood out in his memory, Edwards said, "William Diggs. He had a little museum in Charles County, Maryland, that was all about slavery. What was really interesting was all the artifacts he had were from his own family, from his ancestors. The ball and chain that held his great grandfather. The bill of sale for his great grandmother. It made such an impression on me that I saw this horrible institution in a different light. I wasn't able to see it reading a history book. But when you see personal artifacts relating to - by genealogy at least - a living human being, it was just more impressive to me than just about anything I've ever read about slavery before."

The decision by NPR executives in 2004 to replace Edwards as host of Morning Edition and demote him to the ever-growing group of "Senior Correspondents" was met with an unprecedented firestorm of public criticism - within days more than 10,000 letters, calls and e-mails flooded into NPR’s national headquarters, with a final tally upwards to 50,000 complaints and more than 24,000 electronic "signatures" on an online petition demanding his reinstatement. The negative publicity was accelerated by NPR's complete inability to explain the reasons for the demotion, releasing "corporate-speak" press releases sounding more like big business than a publicly-owned entity. Eventually, because of the embarrassment NPR created for itself, and the reaction of local affiliates (the announcement occurred during many station's fundraising periods), NPR and its executives and board members began to circulate inaccurate rumors blaming Edwards for the dismissal, becoming vicious enough that Edwards threated to sue. He told the Boston Globe, "That really upset me...because that made me look like a chump. If they had told me I would have a cohost, I would still be over there. They were scrambling to think of something. I was satisfied with a written statement...that was enough for me to back off." (The network removed him six months before the programs' 25th anniversary; when that anniversary rolled around, less than 30 seconds of the program was dedicated to noting the event, apparently to avoid reminding listeners of what they had lost.)

Edwards' final Morning Edition program was on April 30, 2004, where his last interview on that broadcast was with CBS newsman Charles Osgood, Edwards' first Morning Edition interview subject almost 25 years earlier. Closing out the program, he thanked not only his listeners and supporters, but, "the hundreds who have worked with me on NPR programs, and have done their best to make me sound like I know what I'm talking about."

Because NPR refused to give any solid reasons for Edwards' demotion (or perhaps gave too many reasons, none making much sense), it was left to those on the outside to explain his removal from the program; Linda Ellerbee in the Los Angeles Times and Ellen Goodman in the Washington Post suggested ageism, an "NPR executive who declined to be quoted by name because he will continue to work with Edwards" quoted in the Washington Post said it was because Edwards, "didn't have the pace and the engagement with reporters in the field that we are looking for," and Bill Radke in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer suggested it was that Edwards, "has no filter." Some websites have promoted the theory that it was because of a commencement speech he gave at the University of Kentucky in 2003, which was widely circulated on right-wing blogs as "evidence of NPR's liberal bias." Edwards told Tavis Smiley on his television program that, "I asked the Vice President for News the other day. I said, 'You know, it's been a year. Can you tell me now why you did it?' And he said, 'No, we can't have that conversation.' So now I may never know."

Immediately after, he embarked on a book tour around the country promoting his book, Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism, and raising more than $1.2 million dollars in support funding for various public radio stations. Throughout the tour, angered listeners complained about his demotion, while job offers poured in. Eventually, Edwards decided to produce a weekdaily program for XM Satellite Radio. (In a bizarre coda to his association with NPR, he was asked by executives to withhold announcing his decision until after the Public Radio Development and Marketing Conference in Austin, TX. Then NPR itself broke the news on its website, and in the top-of-the-hour newscast during the marketing meeting. "That makes no sense to me at all," he told Current. "If they were afraid it was going to disrupt the conference, why did they advance the ball?")

Now heard every weekday morning and evening on XM Satellite Radio, The Bob Edwards Show continues his tradition of interviewing interesting people in all walks of life, but now with the freedom of time. Edwards told the NewsHour's Terrance Smith, "The longest interview I could do on the air for Morning Edition was eight minutes. Now I can interview someone for up to an hour. So it's a freer, more open, more relaxed and enjoyable conversation. The program's really about conversation." The show's first broadcast was on October 4, 2004, staffed by experienced public radio veterans. The first program included Washington Post columnist David Broder, USA Today Supreme Court reporter Joan Biskupic, former CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, and Eugene Robinson, author of Last Dance in Havana.

On September 22, 2005 it was announced that a reedited two-hour version of the XM daily show would be distributed by PRI (Public Radio International) to terrestrial public radio stations in the form of Bob Edwards Weekend, for use anytime Friday through Sunday evening, allowing those not yet fortunate enough to be XM subscribers to get a weekly, if not daily, dose of the Edwards' interview style. The program premiered on January 6-8, 2006 on at least eleven public radio stations around the country, with guests Joe Feuerherd, Carole Coleman, Tom Bodett, Maureen Dowd, and Bonnie Raitt.

Bob Edwards is the author of Fridays With Red: A Radio Friendship (1993) based on his Friday morning radio interviews with renowned broadcaster Red Barber, and Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism, published in 2004. Edwards is a national vice president of AFTRA, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He and his wife, Sharon, have three children, Brean Campbell, Susannah Edwards, and Eleanor Edwards, and one grandchild.