The puppet used for Granny Bird was actually a spare Big Bird puppet, and Spinney provided her voice. It’s me, Big Bird!’ So he said, ‘Is it really you, Big Bird?’ ‘Yes, it is.’ I chatted a while with him, about 10 minutes, and he said, ‘I’m glad you’re my friend Big Bird’.”. Debra Spinney is the proud and longtime wife of beloved puppeteer, Caroll Spinney aka, Sesame Street’s Big Bird. A favorite highlight for Caroll was conducting symphony orchestras and performing with them across the United States, Australia, and China, allowing him to personally connect with families everywhere through the music of Sesame Street. Spinney is also survived by his three children, Jessica, Melissa and Ben, along with his grandchildren.

[16], Though Big Bird and Oscar were his main characters, Spinney also performed as other characters. She was sent to the studio by an employment agency, and when she arrived on the brutally cold Sesame Street set, she was freezing in her mini skirt and “little-nothing coat”. And so his father wrote to me right away, and said ‘Thank you, thank you’ – he hadn’t seen him smile since October, and this was in March – and when the phone was hung up, he said ‘Big Bird called me! I feel I will always be Big Bird. Caroll Spinney and Debra Gilroy were married for 40 years before his death on December 8, 2019. Spinney narrated the audiobook Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by Michael Davis. But he then met and began dating Debra and she helped him turn his life around. One of the jobs was a managerial position at a Playtex bra factory. The Crown inquiry shows there are dunces aplenty at the top end of town, Transcripts reveal extent of Ghislaine Maxwell’s denials, Harry and Meghan’s latest project, the Archewell Foundation, is all Greek to them – and everyone else, Victoria scrambles to confront the major challenges of its ‘slow’ COVID contact tracing system, Melbourne property market revives as city celebrates lockdown’s easing, The Bling Ring: Australia Post luxury watch fiasco draws the PM’s ire and a prober’s spotlight, States of play: Why the deluge of early postal votes means chaos and uncertainty are inevitable, Packer uses his Crown votes to save directors’ pay from protest vote, The New Daily uses cookies. At one point, he created and performed Bruno the Trash Man, a full-bodied puppet representing a garbage carrier, who also carried Oscar’s trash can. He continued puppeteering throughout his childhood and adolescence and used his performances to raise money for college tuition. Forty years later, Gilroy was by her husband’s side when he died at age 85 on December 8 at his home in Woodstock, Connecticut. [6] Through that decade, he was also a commercial artist and animator. “He helped shape and define Sesame Street from its earliest days,” said the Sesame Studio. In this interview Caroll and his wife Debra talk about the amazing journey that their life together has been. The second position was for a secretary position at Sesame Street. '”, Caroll Spinney Dead: Big Bird & Oscar the Grouch Puppeteer Was 85, Copyright © 2020 Heavy, Inc. All rights reserved. You make me happy.’ And it turns out that his father and mother were sitting with him when the phone call came. After all, we’re a family! He is also a cartoonist, author and speaker.