Spartan Profiles: Bob Guiney
THE BACHELOR
Last year, millions of reality television fans saw him trying to win the heart of Trista Rehn in ABC’s Bachelorette series. He did not win, but still, viewers loved Bob Guiney, ’93, a mortgage banker and broker from Ferndale. So ABC cast him as the star in this fall’s “The Bachelor,” where 25 beautiful young ladies will vie for his heart week after week. “They had more applications than ever for the show, which was really flattering,” says Guiney. “I can tell you this. After meeting the 25 women (finalists), it was obvious how tough the job was going to be!”
Do not feel sorry for Bob. The same day he got the show he was invited to do Oprah—which he has now done multiple times—and Penguin made him a book deal (What A Difference A Year Makes will hit bookstores in November).
A native of Riverview in Detroit’s “downriver” area, Bob was recruited by MAC schools but chose to play Big Ten football at MSU as a walk-on quarterback. “My uncle Andy ‘Big Red’ Sandifer was on the MSU team and I went to almost all the home games for years,” he explains. “I made the travel team and had a blast.”
Bob was also singer and songwriter for a band called Fat Amy. “We really started to get popular regionally my senior year,” he recalls, crediting professor Steven McCornack with giving him career advice. “The next thing I knew we got a record deal and took off from there!” B
ob and fellow Spartan Greg Clausen, ’93, also a Riverview classmate, started an Allied Home Mortgage branch and still run it. “He does most of the work,” notes Bob. “I always say I will never quit my day job! Its tough at times to stay involved as much as I'd like to though.”
Bob calls sudden climb to television fame “a fluke.” After successive knee and achilles surgeries, he was feeling low when two of his office assistants, without his knowledge, signed him up for “The Bachelorette” show. “Ever since they did that to me,” he sighs, “I’ve hardly been home.”