When Obed Shelton was seven years old, his father gave him a toy violin for Christmas.  Obed showed such an interest in the toy that his parents decided to start him on the real thing in the Cleveland Public Schools.  He soon began private lessons through the Cleveland Music Settlement and then with private teachers. He later won a scholarship to study the violin at Ohio University.

After a year at Ohio University, he took an interest in radio and television and changed his major to Communications and began his broadcasting career reporting news for radio station WJMO in Cleveland.  That's when he began using his high school nickname "Obie" professionally. Obie had reported news and hosted programs on nearly every topic from sports to politics on every major broadcasting station in Greater Cleveland.  For the last 14 years he has been a reporter at NBC affiliate WKYC-TV in Cleveland where he is now the News Departments Religion Reporter.

In his music career, he had directed choirs and orchestras and composed and recorded music.  In May, 1998 he released his first violin solo recording, "In Hymn" in which he arranged and produced all of the songs. Since then, he has been a featured artist with Bishop T.D. Jakes and has soloed with the Akron Symphony Orchestra on his own orchestral arrangement of Amazing Grace.  He was a guest artist and M.C. at the June 2000 Gospel Celebration in Chicago, and was a guest artist of the 1999 season of Cleveland Trinity Cathedral's "brown bag" lunch concerts.

Obie and his wife, Wendy, live in Cleveland's Shaker Square community with their eight-year-old son, Owen.