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Fred Grandy was raised wealthy and Republican, and met David Eisenhower while attending Philips Exeter Academy. When Eisenhower married Julie Nixon, Grandy served as best man. He performed with the comedy troupe The Proposition for two years, and co-wrote a play with Jane Curtin that ran briefly on Broadway. After graduating from Harvard, he worked as an aide to U.S. Representative Wiley Mayne.

He was briefly Adrienne Barbeau`s love interest on Maude, played Watergate figure Donald Segretti in the 1979 TV adaptation of John Dean`s Blind Ambition, and most famously, Grandy played the bumbling Gopher on The Love Boat. Off camera, when he told Gavin MacLeod, his Love Boat captain, that he was leaving the show to run for Congress, MacLeod whipped out his checkbook and made Grandy`s first campaign contribution.

As a four-term U.S. Congressman from Iowa, Grandy became known as a moderate Republican. He gave up his Congressional seat to run for Governor of Iowa in 1994, lost, and instead became President of Goodwill Industries. He has since co-hosted a radio talk show and occasionally returned to acting with guest roles in episodic television.