While taking a shot at the vivified arrangement Rocko's Modern Life, Kenny met sea life scholar and illustrator Stephen Hillenburg, who was likewise the inventive chief in the show's fourth season. A long time before the airing of Rocko's Modern Life, Hillenburg composed a comic book titled The Intertidal Zone in 1989, and a companion of his let him know that he ought to make a vivified arrangement focused around the comic book. In attempting to discover a principle character of the show, Hillenburg drew a square wipe which he thought was interesting and concluded that he had discovered his character. After the retraction of Rocko's Modern Life in 1996, Hillenburg started creating the idea and enlisted previous Rocko group parts. To voice the character of Spongebob, Hillenburg approached Kenny, who had at one time worked with him on that arrangement. The arrangement debuted on May 1, 1999 on Nickelodeon. In 2000, amid its second season, the show turned into a business achievement. Kenny voices different characters on the show too: including Gary the Snail, the French storyteller (a farce of Jacques Cousteau), Spongebob's father Harold Squarepants, and his real life depiction of Patchy the Pirate.

He is likewise a vocalist and musical performer and was the front man for the Syracuse and his band The Tearjerkers starting in the early 1980s, when he supplanted the first vocalist Buddy Love. Different parts of The Tearjerkers included Charlie Robbins, Dave Decirce and Dave Soule. While the Tearjerkers did not turn into a national demonstration, one Tearjerkers roadie would happen to accomplish distinction: humorist Bobcat Goldthwait.

Notwithstanding Spongebob, Tom Kenny has voiced numerous characters in excess of 200 creations. Kenny said that he voices "a great deal of sweet yellow characters for reasons unknown." He depicted his viewpoint on Spongebob's voice in a meeting: "He's not exactly a grown-up, he's not exactly a child. Think a Stan Laurel, Jerry Lewis sort of kid man. Sort of like a Munchkin yet not exactly, sort of like a child, however not in a Charlie Brown tyke's voice on the TV shows". Kenny has acted in numerous movies and TV shows, appearing in How I Got Into College (1989) and later he showed up in movies, for example, Shakes The Clown and Comic Book: The Movie. He showed up in representation comedies The Edge and Mr. Show. He likewise showed up in the real to life fragments of Spongebob Squarepants as Patchy the Pirate, and showed up on R.l. Stine's The Haunting Hour on the season four scene, "Uncle Howee" as Uncle Howee, a high-vitality kids' show host with odd forces.

Kenny initially met his wife Jill Talley in 1992 while chipping away at The Edge in 1992. The two have since as often as possible worked together on Spongebob in addition to different meets expectations. They have two youngsters, Mack and Nora.