Louisville, Ky. – Recently something went wrong with the vital signs of an 88-year-old man. He had spent four months in quiet suffering and apparent deterioration in hospital rooms and rehabilitation chambers. Suddenly, the blood pressure monitor, which had been so dysfunctional for so long that Bob Weihe’s pressure had dropped low enough to thwart rehabilitation efforts (and almost all others), chimed in with a fresh reading. It declared an impossible, flawless 120/80.
“It was strange,” says Barbara Toohey, his wife of 68 years and three months and one week. He believes it had “something to do with getting home” for the first time since Christmas morning in mid-April. Then she agreed with her son in front of the family on Friday night that it clearly had something to do with something else. From the time when, at age 9, Bob Weahey went to the 1947 Kentucky Derby with his mother, and she suggested he crawl through the four-deep crowd by knees and ankles to the rail to get a vague glimpse of the horses, he has attended every single Derby. This means that if he can somehow make it to the event on Saturday, his tally could reach 80, in a world where it is very rare to hear the words “80 in a row”.
No, he didn’t in 1954, when he and his teenage friends stood outside until they spotted a friendly drainpipe they could climb. He certainly didn’t miss it in 1963, when he drove his Coca-Cola truck around southern Indiana and recommended the neglected Chateau to those asking for a derby tip, then went back to southern Indiana the next week and distributed the winnings to anyone who would listen. He missed the time when Barbara had surgery – “I wouldn’t let him miss the derby for anything,” she said in 2020 – so he took his 90-year-old mother while Barbara was off on the derby afternoon and for a while found no way to get home, a story that demonstrates his good humor. He didn’t miss the empty, ghostly, fan-less Derby on September 5 during COVID-19 restrictions, even in 2020. When the horse’s owner Max Player learned his streak could end at 73 straight, he added Bob to his owner group.
As the name suggests, “Derby Bob” has patronized the derby through many inclement weather days: the brutal cold of 1957, the brutal heat of 2008, the shameless rains of the late 2010s. He and fellow Louisville native Barbara came up in fleeting fashion at various times, starting in 1957 when Bob and his dear friends entered Churchill Downs from first grade, went to the second floor, put their tickets in garland cases and put them down for their future wives to use a second time. “Many times we would fit in a box and people would come over, and no one would move,” says Barbara. This lasted until the cool, rainy day of 2025, when son Mark said, “I guarantee he was miserable. But he sat there all day.” That made it 79, and he had good dreams around 80 from time to time. But then came Christmas morning 2025 when he couldn’t get out of bed, and then came four months of infections and setbacks that signaled the end of the series.
“I didn’t know what was happening,” says Bob Weihe. “I was completely out of it. Once I figured out what was going on, I thought, well, now I can convince myself that I can get better. I convinced myself [in February] So that I can go to Derby. He said I had to eat to go to the derby. So I tried to eat, but I couldn’t. None of the food tasted good. It tasted terrible.” She thought, “I don’t know what would work.”
“Even in rehab, his oxygen would go down and he’d call everyone in,” says Barbara. Scott says, “And he actually called into hospice at one point. He was kind of crazy. He would look at you without actually seeing you.” And, again Scott: “When I was there the doctors told him, ‘You’re dying.’ Finally in April, Bob said, “I want to go home,” and Mark remembers him saying, “‘I want you to understand that if you go home and get sick, they’re going to let you die.’ And he said, ‘I’ve been gone 88 years. If it’s my time, it’s my time.”
By May 1, Bob spoke in the strained voice he was struggling to summon, lying in a hospital bed, tucked away to one side of the family room in the house where he grew up, in the house he and Barbara have shared since 1975 (on his second shift at that), a house perhaps six miles from Churchill Downs. It’s a house a few doors down from where daughter Becky lives, and it’s where Bob and Barbara and sons Mark and Scott watched the Kentucky Oaks on the eve of the Derby, Bob’s eyes on the screen during a postrace interview with winning jockey Jose Ortiz. It’s a home rich in scrapbooks and memorabilia assembled by a man who is very eager to get autographs from derbies – winning jockeys and trainers at derby events who, while sometimes on road trips, like when Bob coached St. Francis of Assisi High football for 24 years, he and Barbara might stop and knock on a jockey’s door.
“Can I lie down and take a nap?” He jokes about lying down at 9 pm on a Friday night, because Saturday was already full of promises. The blood pressure monitor had spoken and some hero intervention had taken place and Bob Weahe (pronounced Why) was heading straight to the derby in the 80th. CBS reporter David Begnaud made a video appeal to Weihs for help in locating the extremely expensive tickets. Churchill Downs helped. Bob’s determination had prevailed. Then concerns ranged from finding a wheelchair (which was provided by the hospice) to an accessible van (for which Mark’s fellow patrons of the local bar tried to help by calling around). Where can they park? How could they reach Churchill’s even stronger fortress? What about Bob’s oxygen?
Arriving Saturday morning, Barbara says, “At first he was a little sad and then when he really woke up, I asked him if he was ready to go to the Derby and he said, ‘Yeah!'” – as if Barbara didn’t need to be asked.
What happens next sends the family into a state of blissful disbelief. The streak is alive again. Hospice arrives and dresses Bob, including his new hat with a ribbon that reads “Derby Bob’s 80th.” At noon a van arrives, but also – wow – a police escort. The streak is alive again. CBS comes. Churchill Downs ambassador, Greg Cobb, arrives. Becky, the grandchildren, significant others and great-grandchildren bid farewell. Bob, who, like almost all derby regulars, rarely picks a winner, gives his pick to a cop who asked for advice: 1-19-22. The van platform seats him in a wheelchair. The streak is alive again. At about 4:15 p.m., with all approximately 150,000 attendees long inside Churchill Downs, a motorcade begins consisting of two troop cars in front, a tan van, a CBS car and a last troop car. The van carries Bob, Barbara, Mark, Scott, and childhood family friend Bill Tharp, a retired physical therapist who could help with any emergencies. A short journey turns out to be a delightfully long one. Bob works miracles. “He said he couldn’t believe he got a police escort,” says Mark. Tharp says he saw Bob crying, who was never supposed to cry.
At exactly 4:30, they reached the main entrance near the statue of the late 2006 derby winner Barbero. A few drops of rain have stopped. Akash has stopped thinking. The brightly colored people haven’t stopped taking pictures with Barbero. An airplane circling overhead advertises auto parts. The Goodyear Blimp flies around. As the van doors open and the stage begins to lower Bob to the ground, about 15 spectators applaud his arrival, including a self-described caregiver who did not know him but had heard his story.
A fence opens and the group enters, reviving the streak with Tharp steering Bob. An elevator ride leads to a spacious clubhouse overlooking the expanse. The Derby card has reached its 10th race (the Derby is 12th), and as Bob watches that race, his head turns to follow the finish and he looks no different from the kid crawling through his knees and ankles in 1947. He drinks some water. He looks at a program placed in front of him by Barbara. “It feels amazing,” he says at one point.
“Man, I need to stop crying,” Mark says.
They take Bob back to meet the president of Churchill Downs. They take him to the betting window (1-19-22 for him). The sky is quite blue with harmless clouds. Planes, mostly UPS, flew nearby. People drink. “He’s smiling a lot,” Scott says. While checking Bob’s oxygen saturation level, which comes in at a robust 98, his oxygen is taken off throughout the hour, with Tharp keeping him close by.
Food and drinks are visible even when Bob is not participating. A bearded man wearing a cowboy hat stops in surprise, and Barbara says, “We never dreamed he’d do this this year.” Scott has someone on FaceTime showing him Bob. Mark brings himself a cigar. The derby, possibly louder than 1947, plays Guns N’ Roses, Avicii, Flo Rida, AC/DC, Europe’s “The Final Countdown”. Bob sometimes appears to be dozing but not while racing. He asks holding a traditional derby glass. When “My Old Kentucky Home” plays, he and Barbara repeat their ritual of drinking mint juleps together as usual.
“He tried,” says Barbara. “He didn’t fully understand it.”
The biggest races always add to the excitement, and the board finished at 19-1-22, the same numbers that Bob had chosen (if not in the same order) because of the three jockeys. On those recommendations in the trifecta box, a family member has won about $56,000, the policeman asking for advice has probably won $112,000.
As the roar of the 150,000 subsides and the crowd exits, Bob puts his head back and smiles for an unusually long time. While a novice might have said he smiled on 1-19-22, those in the know knew he smiled watching the Kentucky Derby for the 80th year in a row, as evidenced by everything from Jet Pilot (1947) as a kid on the rails to Golden Tempo (2026) as a man out of the hospital and over the rails. “What a day,” Tharp says to everyone in the elevator going down, and as he walks Bob down the 80th exit from the Kentucky Derby, they walk into the usual dense crowd, a sea of strangers who keep falling apart, their kaleidoscopic clothes making them look like they’re wandering through some crazy botanical garden.
After a arduous three-hour journey, the platform lets Bob onto the van just before 7:30. An hour later, the family room was buzzing with about a dozen family members and their favorite people, including the grateful winner of $56,000. Bob sleeps and even snores for a while. At one point Scott comes in and says, “What an experience.” Begnaud arrives with programs bearing fresh autographs of the winning jockey and trainer, and Bob exclaims, “Wonderful! Wonderful!” Tharp stands by the bed and says, “Look at him,” because he is clearly looking better than he has in any recent day. “It was more than we ever dreamed of,” granddaughter Courtney Waddell, a nurse who cared for Bob, says of that day.
He aims to measure his blood pressure at one point, but the monitor has gone on the fritz, to which the man who has been to the Kentucky Derby 80 times in a row says it doesn’t matter. In that tired voice he says, “I’m still alive,” and, somewhere, his heart and that determination are perhaps as alive as they ever were.
