Mechanical dampers have been proved to be one of the most effective countermeasures for vibration mitigation of stay cables in various cable-stayed bridges over the world. However, for long stay cables, as the installation height of the damper is restricted due to the aesthetic concern, using passive dampers alone may not satisfy the control requirement of the stay cables. In this connection, semi-active MR dampers have been proposed for the vibration mitigation of long stay cables. Although various studies have been carried out on the implementation of MR dampers on stay cables, the optimal damping performance of the cable-MR damper system has yet to be evaluated. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the effectiveness of MR damper as a semi-active control device for the vibration mitigation of stay cable. The mathematical model of the MR damper will first be established through a performance test. Then, an efficient semi-active control strategy will be derived, where the damping of MR damper will be tuned according to the dynamic characteristics of stay cable, in order to achieve optimal damping of cable-damper system. Simulation study will be carried out to verify the proposed semi-active control algorithm for suppressing the cable vibrations induced by different loading patterns using optimally tuned MR damper. Finally, the effectiveness of MR damper in mitigating multi modes of cable vibration will be examined theoretically.