A Look Inside: The Voice of Agriculture, celebrating 45 years of Bob Bosold

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) - Bob Bosold walked into the Eau Claire scene nearly 50 years ago, at a time when WAXX and WEAU were one in the same.

“They were looking for a second person in the farm department and at that time I didn’t know if I wanted to do radio or TV and here was an opportunity to both so I could find out what I really liked,” Bosold recounts. “And it turned out, I dearly loved both, but I started here on Valentine’s Day 1977,” and the rest is history.

With a face and a voice that can be recognized just about anywhere Bosold says it’s a wonderful problem to have, “I’m proud of the fact people look at me and before I even say something know who I am.”

John Murphy has worked beside Bob at Mid-west Family for four decades, and calls a spade when he see one.

“If there ever is a guy that goes all in, that’s Bob, he goes all in with whatever he’s doing,” Murphy going on to say that the listeners play a leading role. “The community really being here in Western Wisconsin, but also throughout the world as well because wherever he goes, he brings the Wisconsin brand with him.”

“This is hard to say about a lot of people but I don’t think there’s a person, he hasn’t met because he’s willing to meet everybody, he’s willing to say hello,” says Murphy. “He can take complicated policies, complicated information, complicated agriculture information and convey it to both the producer and the consumer, in a way that’s acceptable, that’s understandable, at times is playful.”

“I love being live, like on Hello Wisconsin in the morning, I love being live because that interaction is what people really like, they can’t just say ‘here’s Bob with the farm news,’ and I start reading the farm news, that’s boring,” Bosold says.

Acceptance by farmers is by far and away the biggest gratitude Bosold says he has. “When farmers recognize what you do and appreciate what you do, and they tell ya that, ya know, they get up every morning and listen to the show, they want to listen to the markets they want to listen to the news...”

Farmers like Lee Jensen, a third generation dairy farmer out of Elk Mound.

“At our old farm we had a big stall barn and it took us two hours to milk...so we started milking earlier so I could hear bob on the radio,” Jensen laughs. “I never told Bob that but we did do that.”

Jensen calling Bosold one of the most positive lights in agriculture, for big and small farms alike, “and that’s something that you can’t buy, you just, you earn that reputation and he’s well earned it.”

Bob Bosold goes by many names, but above all, the Voice of Agriculture for 45 years and counting.

“Not everybody has the chance to say they’ve talked to everybody from a first year 4H member to the president of the United States, and everybody in between, so it’s for me really and truly because of the people I work with, the farmers, and the kids been a labor of love and I’ve enjoyed every minute of it,” Bosold says.

“There is nobody in this country better at doing what he does as an agriculture director, he is number one, he’s the best,” says Murphy. “I don’t know if you can create something like that, I think that’s just the phenomenon that is Bob Bosold.”

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