Arthur Ira Garfunkel is an American singer, poet, and actor. He is best known for his partnership with Paul Simon in the folk rock duo Simon & Garfunkel.
Art Garfunkel Parents: Meet Jacob Garfunkel, Rose Garfunkel
Garfunkel was born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York City, the son of Rose (born Pearlman) and Jacob “Jack” Garfunkel, a traveling salesman. Art was a middle child with two brothers, the older Jules and the younger Jerome. Jacob’s parents immigrated to the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century and settled in Manhattan.
Before his career in sales, Jacob worked as an actor in Dayton, Ohio. Garfunkel is of Romanian-Jewish descent, his paternal grandparents having emigrated from the city of Iași. When he was young, he would often sing in the synagogue. His maternal cousin was Lou Pearlman, founder of the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC.
At his bar mitzvah in 1954, Garfunkel performed as a cantor, singing over four hours of his repertoire for his family. As a young teen, Garfunkel became ill with a lung infection, leading to a love for basketball. He explained in a 1998 interview: “In the summer of ’55, I had a lung infection.