A very Jim Gardner Thanksgiving Day Parade ahead of his 6abc retirement

In a made-for-TV moment, a pair of Philadelphia television celebrities surprised viewers — and each other — with a touching tribute to retiring 6abc news anchor Jim Gardner at this year’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

To honor Gardner, who has delivered the 6 and 11 p.m. news for more than four decades, fans came equipped with placards and even wore fake mustaches to look like him.

Gardner’s following only expanded when he earned a nod in the Philly-set comedy Abbott Elementary.

Gardner made a cameo in the show’s first season but didn’t meet creator and star Quinta Brunson until Thursday when she surprised him during the 6abc Dunkin’ Thanksgiving Day Parade broadcast, thanking him for being on the show.

“Everyone now knows the beauty of Jim Gardner,” Brunson said. “I’ve been watching you since I was a little girl.”

“My whole family loves you, all of Philadelphia loves you, but now the whole world gets a chance to love you,” she added.

A group of fans, including a toddler with a homemade microphone adorned with a 6abc logo, attended the parade wearing fake gray mustaches akin to the newscaster’s.

Gardner shared a picture of his mustachioed fans on Twitter, wishing them a happy Thanksgiving.

“People ask what I’ll miss,” he wrote. “Lots of things, but nothing more than the unique relationship ⁦6abc⁩ Action News has with our viewers. You guys are crazy, but all kinds of fun!”

Gardner started delivering the 6 and 11 p.m. newscasts May 11, 1977. His devout following spans generations, and it only grew when he was featured on Abbott Elementary.

“Now I’m a proud married Christian woman and I love my husband,” says Sheryl Lee Ralph’s character dreamily into the camera. “But there’s something about that Jim Gardner, that non-region diction.”

“You are redoing the landscape of television,” Gardner said to a gushing Brunson on Thursday. “You are!”

Gardner has an open invitation from 6abc to return for the parade next year. Still, fans like Mary Beth Ivey chose to cherish their memories of him Thursday. A former Kensington resident who made the trip to the parade from Rochester, N.Y., Ivey reminisced on how “debonair and handsome” Gardner was when she saw him on television.

“He was charismatic and just like he was sitting in your living room talking to you about the news,” said Ivey, who attended the parade for the first time in 35 years. “Not phony and trying to come up acting.”

Ivey, who also retired in her 70s, couldn’t believe he will be leaving local television news.

“Sooner or later you just have to pull the plug and leave,” she said.