‘Brady Bunch’ Star Maureen McCormick Reveals How She Honors TV Dad Robert Reed 27 Years After His Death

The Brady Bunch turns 50 years old on Sept. 26, 2019, and the stars who played the six siblings on the iconic ABC comedy are celebrating in a big way. The living cast members of the classic sitcom will star in HGTV’s A Very Brady Renovation, premiering Sept. 9.

On the home renovation series, fans will see the cast painstakingly renovate the California home that was used in the show’s exterior shots from 1969 to 1974. But the reunion also brings to mind the loss of the actors who played The Brady Bunch parents: Robert Reed and Florence Henderson, as well as maid Alice (Ann B. Davis).

In a recent interview with Closer Weekly, Brady Bunch star Maureen McCormick, who played the eldest golden-haired daughter, Marcia Brady, on the series, revealed that she still thinks of her TV dad every day. Reed, whom the cast called “Bob” on set, died in 1992 at age 59 after a battle with colon cancer.

McCormick said she even felt Reed’s presence when shooting the HGTV renovation series.

“I have a real love for gardening and gardens and being outdoors and Bob had a beautiful place in Pasadena and the most beautiful rose gardens. It’s funny because my backyard is filled with roses now and I always think of him and there was one rose that had been at the Brady house when we first got there — it was taken out of the ground and put in a really special place, just right outside the family room to celebrate Bob which was so special.”

Indeed, when A Very Brady Renovation was first announced, McCormick’s TV brother, Barry Williams told reporters the cast could feel the presence of Reed, Henderson, and Davis as they remembered what a significant part of the show they were and will always be, according to The Chicago Sun-Times.

“We can feel the presence of them in these rooms that are being created, through the memories and the shows,” The Brady Bunch star said.

It’s no secret that Robert Reed despised his role on The Brady Bunch, but he loved his co-stars as if they were his real children. In his 1992 book Growing Up Brady: I Was a Teenage Greg, Brady Bunch star Barry Williams revealed that back in the 1970s, Reed paid for the entire cast to board the Queen Elizabeth II for a trip to Europe and that he even gifted them home movie cameras to document the trip.

While there was speculation about the allegedly closeted Reed’s personal life, Williams once told People he always looked up to his TV father as a “friend, father and actor.”

It is clear that Mr. Brady also left a major impact on McCormick as well.