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

Chuck Woolery, the charismatic game show host who launched a long-running series Wheel of fortune before I spent 11 years playing matchmaker Love connectiondied. He was 83 years old.

His friend and podcast co-host Mark Young he said TMZ that Woolery died Saturday at his home in Texas, and he they wrote about it on X. No other details were immediately available.

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

After the Kentucky native performed “Delta Dawn.” Merv Griffin’s showGriffin offered him an audition to host a new game show he had just created Merchants’ Bazaar. Woolery defeated his ex 77 Sunset Belt star Edd “Kookie” Byrnes for this job and renamed Wheel of fortune It premiered on NBC on January 6, 1975.

When the show amassed 44 shares in 1981, Woolery demanded a raise from $65,000 a year to about $500,000, which was what other top game show hosts were earning at the time in 2007. Griffin offered him $400,000, and NBC said it was enough. the rest, but this somehow enraged Griffin, who threatened to do it Wheel of fortune by Woolery for CBS.

Not wanting to lose the game show, NBC withdrew the offer, and Griffin fired Woolery and hired Pat Sajak. Also fired: original writer Susan Stafford, replaced by Vanna White.

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

However, wool has rebounded quite well for syndicated products Love connectionchairing over 2,000 episodes of this show from 1983-94. In 1986, he was earning $1 million a year hosting TV shows and NBC ScribbleAccording to an article from 1986 People. (The same year the magazine noted, Love connection grossed $25 million a year and attracted 4.5 million viewers daily).

Woolery also had his own CBS morning show, which did not last long, competing with it Live with Regis and Kathie Lee; co-host of the Family Channel Home and family; and has been the face of other game shows including Jargon on the game show network, Greed on Fox and rebooted 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, then left the service to serve in the United States Navy for several years, then studied economics at Morehead State University while working as a salesman at Pillsbury. He left school again, this time to pursue a music career in Nashville, and he and singer-guitarist Elkin “Bubba” Fowler formed The Avant-Garde in 1967 and signed to Columbia Records.

After the failure of The Avant-Garde, Woolery stuck with it as a solo artist and, with the help of comic book Jonathan Winters, appeared in Today’s program in 1972. He also landed a gig as Mr. Dingle, an elderly postman and shopkeeper, on a syndicated children’s show New zoo revue and made a guest appearance Love, American style.

In 1974, he appeared with his then-wife Jo Ann Pflug in a short film Sonic boom and with Cheryl Ladd and Rosey Grier in a feature film Jamaica’s treasure reef and was the lead vocalist in the new version Your hit parade.

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

ON Love connectiona man or woman watched audition tapes of three potential partners and then chose one on a blind date. The show charged a fee for their night out – $75 when the show first aired.

The pair couldn’t talk to each other about their date until Woolery interviewed them 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 audition stage they thought would be the best match, and sometimes a second date was held. Other times, there was no way the two would ever meet.

“It’s really the only show I watch at home,” Woolery said People history. “I really like his unpredictability.”

For him Love connection trademark Woolery told viewers that the program would return after commercials in “two and two” – two minutes and two seconds, the length of the break at that time – and used hand signals specifically for this purpose.

In 1993 Entertainment Weekly he asked Woolery asks: “Will there ever be gay couples on the show?”

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

Recently, Woolery, an avid fisherman, co-hosted a right-wing podcast with Young Forced blunt truth.

He was married four times – including: with Pflug in 1972-80; music director Teri Nelson Carpenter, granddaughter of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, 1985-2004; and Kim Barnes, whom he married in 2006 and had or raised eight children/stepchildren.