'Sesame Street' Characters: Maria Leaves Show After 44 Happy Years

After 44 happy years with "Sesame Street," Maria has decided to leave and will no longer be appearing next season.

The actress who plays her, Sonia Manzano, 65 has taken on the character since 1971 and has announced her farewell during the American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference.

In the show, Maria owns the Fix-It shop, and she repairs all sorts of things such as toasters with her husband Luis, who is played by Emilio Delgado.

In a statement provided to the Associated Press, the show thanked and lauded Manzano for being with the "Sesame Street" family for all these years, and maintained that she will always be a part of the show despite her departure.

The statement reads: "In confirming Manzano's retirement, Sesame Workshop said 'she will always be a part of the fabric of our neighborhood. During her 44-year career as the iconic 'Maria,' and the first leading Latina woman on television, she was a role model for young girls and women for generations.'"

Manzano has been nominated for an Emmy Award for her role as Maria but unfortunately did not win, although she won 15 awards as the scriptwriter of the show.

The actress grew up in a Puerto Rican neighborhood in the Bronx, and she attended Manhattan's High School of Performing Arts and graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Her acting career began when she was in the original cast of "Godspell," a musical which began as a student production on campus.

Manzano will always be fond of "Sesame Street," and she said during the ALA conference: "Sesame Street, as everyone knows, was set in the inner city and there was a particular reason for that. Our first target audience were the children in the inner city that were underserved. And we thought that if they learned their basic cognitive skills, they could start kindergarten on an even level with their middle-class peers. And it was a very idealistic time - we thought we'd, like, close the education gap by doing that."

One of the first things they had to do was make sure that the kids in the inner city could relate to them, so "Sesame Street" was very mindful about their setting. "And what better way to do that than have the show come to them from a place that was familiar to them. And the stoop in Harlem was the most familiar to them," she said.