Ray Goulding, who was half of the Bob and Ray comedy team that delighted radio and television audiences for more than four decades with low-key humor and gentle satire, died of kidney failure on Saturday at his home in Manhasset, L.I. He was 68 years old.

Although he and his partner, Bob Elliott, were seen frequently on television beginning in the 1950's and had a run on Broadway in 1970 as ''The Two and Only,'' radio was their first medium and their real home. They performed together until ill health overtook Mr. Goulding two years ago. In the early 1980's, they were heard on National Public Radio in an updated version of the original ''Bob and Ray'' show they had created in Boston in 1946.

In 15-minute and half-hour broadcasts they produced, wrote and delivered on the air, the team created a stable of improbable yet totally recognizable characters, all played by the two men. Among the most memorable were Wally Ballou, the bumbling interviewer of subjects famous and obscure; Mary McGoon, a cooking authority who wandered into dispensing all-purpose advice; the Piel brothers, Harry and Bert, in a series of commercials for Piel's beer, and a writer named O. Leo Leahy.

'Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife'

Perhaps the pair's best-remembered routine was a sendup of radio soap operas, ''Mary Backstayge, Noble Wife,'' which spoofed the highly popular 1940's serial ''Mary Noble, Backstage Wife.'' Mr. Goulding, who had a booming, baritone voice but could produce a coloratura falsetto, played the heroine, as well as the playwright Gregg Marlowe and assorted other characters, and Mr. Elliott, in a soft, nasal voice, took the parts of Harry Backstayge and the stage doorman Pop Beloved.

In this as in other sketches, Bob and Ray used an exquisite sense of timing to produce laughs. Their voices often seemed to be crossing each other, now cutting into a sentence never finished, now simply tailing off into silence, giving the impression that the entire sequence was improvised, which sometimes it was.

A specialty of the team was the interview of an expert in an exotic or unlikely field of endeavor by an often perplexed radio reporter. One of Mr. Goulding's favorites, members of his family said yesterday, had him playing the owner of a factory that produced handmade paper clips.

When Bob, as the interviewer, elicited the fact that workers took home only one cent a day in pay and remarked that the amount seemed to make it awfully hard for them to make ends meet, Ray, as the owner, replied with only a touch of defensiveness: ''We don't like to get into prying. That's not our style.''

'We Had No Rivalry'

Mr. Elliott, who is currently performing on Garrison Keillor's ''American Radio Theater of the Air'' on public radio, said yesterday that although his partner's death was not unexpected, ''I have a terrible feeling of loss.''

''I think the main reason we worked well together was that we really appreciated each other, as opposed to some comedy teams,'' he said. ''We had no rivalry, just great mutual respect. We always got along well.''

Bob and Ray were known as hard workers, for many years being entirely responsible for producing, writing and performing in a live five-days-a-week broadcast and sandwiching in other appearances as well.

One of Mr. Goulding's six children, Bryant, said yesterday, ''I think Dad spent as much time over the years with Bob as with my mother.''

Raymond W Goulding