“Wheel of Fortune,” host of “Love Connection,” was 83 years old

Chuck Woolery, the charismatic game show host who kicked things off Wheel of Fortune before playing matchmaker for 11 years Love connectionhas died. He was 83.

Woolery died Saturday at his home in Texas outside Austin, said his friend and podcast co-host Mark Young The Hollywood Reporter. Young also posted about it on X.

Woolery got his start in show business as the singer for the orchestral pop band The Avant-Garde, whose most famous song, “Naturally Stoned,” reached No. 40 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1968 and became the theme song for his (very) short-lived reality series Game Show Network in 2003.

After the Kentucky native performed “Delta Dawn.” The Merv Griffin ShowGriffin offered him the chance to audition as host of a new game show he had just developed Shopping bazaar. Woolery beat the former 77 Sunset Strip Star Edd “Kookie” Byrnes for the job and the rebrand Wheel of Fortune Premiered on NBC on January 6, 1975.

When the show reached a share of 44 in 1981, Woolery requested a raise from $65,000 a year to about $500,000, what other top game show hosts were making at the time, he recalled in 2007. Griffin offered him $400,000 and NBC said it would be fine. He did the rest, but that kind of pissed off Griffin, who was with the Takeover threatened Wheel of Fortune to CBS, according to Woolery.

To avoid losing the game show, NBC withdrew the offer and Griffin fired Woolery and hired Pat Sajak. Also fired: original letter writer Susan Stafford, who was replaced by Vanna White.

Woolery noted that Griffin “wanted to bring out the best in me” and said the two never spoke again before Griffin died of prostate cancer in 2007.

However, Woolery recovered quite well with the syndicate Love connectionwho directed more than 2,000 episodes of this series from 1983 to 1994. In 1986, he was making $1 million a year hosting this show and NBC’s shows Scrabbleaccording to a 1986 article in People. (This year the magazine pointed out Love connection grossed $25 million per year and attracted 4.5 million viewers per day.)

Woolery also had his own CBS daytime morning show, but he didn’t compete with it for long Live with Regis and Kathie Lee; was a co-host of the Family Channel Home and family; and has been the face of other game shows including slang on Game Show Network, Greed on Fox and a reboot The dating game for syndication.

Charles Herbert Woolery was born on March 16, 1941 in Ashland, Kentucky. His father, Dan, owned a fountain supply company, and his mother, Katherine, was a homemaker.

He briefly attended the University of Kentucky before dropping out to serve a few years in the US Navy. He then studied economics at Morehead State University while also working as a salesman at Pillsbury. He left school again, this time to pursue a music career in Nashville, and in 1967 formed The Avant-Garde with singer and guitarist Elkin “Bubba” Fowler and signed with Columbia Records.

After The Avant-Garde faltered, Woolery stuck around as a solo artist, appearing on The Avant-Garde with support from comedian Jonathan Winters The Tonight Show in 1972. He also landed an appearance as Mr. Dingle, an elderly postman and store owner, on the syndicated children’s show New zoo review and guest star Love, American style.

In 1974, he appeared in the short film with his then-wife Jo Ann Pflug Sonic boom and with Cheryl Ladd and Rosey Grier in the feature The Treasure of Jamaica Reef and was one of the main singers on a new version of Your hit parade.

He received a Daytime Emmy in 1978 for his work on the film Wheel of Fortune.

To Love connectionA man or woman watched the audition videos of three potential partners and then chose one for a blind date. The show would pick up the tab for their evening – $75 when the show first aired.

The couple couldn’t talk to each other about their date until they were interviewed by Woolery on the show a few weeks later to see how it went. The studio audience was asked to vote on which of the three people in the casting phase they thought would be the best fit for them, and sometimes there was a second appointment. There was no way the two of them would ever go out again another time.

“This is really the only show I do that I will watch at home,” Woolery said on the broadcast People Story. “I really like his unpredictability.”

For him Love connection Woolery told viewers that the show would return after the commercials in “two and two” – two minutes and two seconds, the length of the break at the time – and had a hand signal just for that.

In 1993 Weekly entertainment Woolery asked, “Would you ever have gay couples on the show?”

“No,” he replied. “You think it would work if a guy sat down and I said, ‘Well, where did you guys meet and so and so?’ Then I get to the end of the date and say, “Did you kiss?” Give me a break. Do you think America at large will identify with this? I don’t think that works at all.”

More recently, Woolery, an avid fisherman, co-hosted the right-wing podcast with Young Truth of blunt force.

He was married four times – including to Pflug from 1972 to 1980; to music executive Teri Nelson Carpenter, granddaughter of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, from 1985-2004; and to Kristen Barnes, whom he married in 2006 – and had or raised eight children/stepchildren.

In addition to his wife, survivors include his sons Michael and Sean and his daughter Melissa.