Chuck Woolery, whose game-show hosting career included tenures at Wheel of Fortune and Love Connection, has died at age 83.
Mark Young, Woolery’s friend and podcast cohost, shared the news on X on Saturday. “It is with a broken heart that I tell you that my dear brother @chuckwoolery has just passed away,” Young wrote. “Life will not be the same without him. RIP, brother.”
Young told TMZ he was at Woolery’s home in Texas when the former TV host reported not feeling well and went to lie down. When Young checked in later, Woolery was having trouble breathing, and despite a 911 call, Woolery died shortly thereafter.
Woolery was born on March 16, 1941, in Ashland, Kentucky, to a business owner and a homemaker, according to The Hollywood Reporter. After stints at the University of Kentucky, in the U.S. Navy, and at Morehead State University, Woolery moved to Nashville to start a music career. He and singer Elkin “Bubba” Fowler formed the psychedelic pop duo The Avant-Garde, and their song “Naturally Stoned” peaked at No. 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968.
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A singing performance on The Merv Griffin Show led Woolery to audition for a new game show, originally titled Shopper’s Bazaar, that Merv Griffin was developing at the time. After some tinkering, Wheel of Fortune debuted on NBC on January 6, 1975. Griffin earned a Daytime Emmy for his Wheel work and hosted the show until 1981, when a salary dispute led producers to replace him with Pat Sajak.
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Woolery moved on with a job hosting the syndicated dating game show Love Connection from 1983 to 1994, pulling in 4.5 million viewers a day at one point. He also emceed the game show Scrabble from 1984 to 1990, and between the two shows, he was earning $1 million a year by 1986, as People reported at the time. Woolery also hosted the game show Greed on Fox from 1999 to 2000 and Lingo on Game Show Network from 2002 to 2007.
In recent years, Woolery stoked controversy with his political views, posting a tweet that sparked antisemitism accusations in 2017 and then claiming in 2020 that “everyone [was] lying” about the coronavirus pandemic, as Newsweek reported. He also argued that minorities didn’t need civil rights, according to the Associated Press.
Woolery was married four times, and his ex-wives included actor Jo Ann Pflug. He had eight children and stepchildren, per THR.
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