Chuck Woolery, the charismatic recreation present host who kicked off the long term of Wheel of Fortune earlier than spending 11 years enjoying matchmaker on Love Connection, has died. He was 83.
His pal and podcast co-host Mark Younger instructed TMZ that Woolery died Saturday at his dwelling in Texas, and he posted about it on X. No different particulars have been instantly out there.
Woolery began out in present enterprise as a singer within the orchestral pop band The Avant-Garde, whose most well-known tune, “Naturally Stoned,” made it to No. 40 on the Billboard Scorching 100 chart in 1968. The tune later served because the theme tune for his (very) short-lived Sport Present Community actuality collection in 2003.
After the Kentucky native carried out “Delta Daybreak” on The Merv Griffin Present, Griffin supplied him an opportunity to audition because the host of a brand new recreation present he had simply developed known as Shopper’s Bazaar. Woolery beat out former 77 Sundown Strip star Edd “Kookie” Byrnes for the job, and the renamed Wheel of Fortune premiered on NBC on Jan. 6, 1975.
With the present pulling in a 44 share in 1981, Woolery requested a elevate from $65,000 a 12 months to about $500,000, what different prime recreation present hosts have been making on the time, he recalled in 2007. Griffin supplied him $400,000 and NBC mentioned it will pony up the remainder, however that someway infuriated Griffin, who threatened to take Wheel of Fortune to CBS, in accordance with Woolery.
Not eager to lose the sport present, NBC withdrew the supply, and Griffin proceeded to fireplace Woolery and rent Pat Sajak. Additionally let go: unique letter-turner Susan Stafford, who was changed by Vanna White.
Woolery famous that Griffin “needed to get the very best of me” and mentioned the 2 by no means spoke once more earlier than Griffin died of prostate most cancers in 2007.
Woolery, nonetheless, rebounded fairly properly with the syndicated Love Connection, presiding over greater than 2,000 episodes of that present from 1983-94. In 1986, he was making $1 million a 12 months internet hosting that and NBC’s Scrabble, in accordance with a 1986 article in Folks. (That 12 months, the journal identified, Love Connection was grossing $25 million a 12 months and drawing 4.5 million viewers a day.)
Woolery additionally had his personal CBS daytime morning present, which didn’t final lengthy in competitors with Dwell With Regis and Kathie Lee; co-hosted the Household Channel’s House and Household; and was the face of different recreation exhibits together with Lingo on the Sport Present Community, Greed on Fox and a rebooted The Courting Sport for syndication.
Charles Herbert Woolery was born on March 16, 1941, in Ashland, Kentucky. His father, Dan, owned a fountain-supplies firm, and his mom, Katherine, was a homemaker.
He briefly attended the College of Kentucky earlier than dropping out to serve a few years within the U.S. Navy, then studied economics at Morehead State College whereas working a gross sales job at Pillsbury. He left college once more, this time to pursue a profession in music in Nashville, and he and singer-guitarist Elkin “Bubba” Fowler based The Avant-Garde in 1967 and signed with Columbia Data.
After The Avant-Garde floundered, Woolery caught with it as a solo artist, and with an help from comedian Jonathan Winters, he appeared on The Tonight Present in 1972. He additionally landed a gig as Mr. Dingle, an aged postman and shopkeeper, on the syndicated children present New Zoo Revue and guest-starred on Love, American Type.
In 1974, he appeared with then-wife Jo Ann Pflug within the quick movie Sonic Increase and with Cheryl Ladd and Rosey Grier within the function The Treasure of Jamaica Reef and was a featured vocalist on a brand new model of Your Hit Parade.
He earned a Daytime Emmy in 1978 for his work on Wheel of Fortune.
On Love Connection, a person or lady would watch audition tapes of three potential mates, then choose one for a blind date. The present would choose up the tab for his or her evening out — $75 when the present first went on the air.
The couple couldn’t speak to one another about their date till they have been interviewed by Woolery on the present a few weeks later to see the way it went. The studio viewers was requested to vote on which of the three folks within the audition section they thought can be the very best match, and typically there can be a second date. Different instances, no manner have been these two ever going out once more.
“That is actually the one present I do this I’ll watch at dwelling,” Woolery mentioned within the Folks story. “I actually like its unpredictability.”
For his Love Connection trademark, Woolery instructed viewers that this system would return after the commercials in “two and two” — two minutes and two seconds, the size of the break again then — and had a hand sign only for that.
In 1993, Leisure Weekly requested Woolery is he “would you ever have homosexual {couples}” on the present.
“No,” he replied. “You assume it will work if a man sat down and I mentioned, ‘Properly, so the place did you meet and so and so?’ then I get to the top of the date and say, ‘Did you kiss?’ Give me a break. Do you assume America by and enormous is gonna establish with that? I don’t assume that works in any respect.”
Extra lately, Woolery, an avid fisherman, co-hosted with Younger the right-wing podcast Blunt Pressure Reality.
He was married 4 instances — together with to Pflug from 1972-80; to music exec Teri Nelson Carpenter, granddaughter of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, from 1985-2004; and to Kim Barnes, whom he married in 2006 — and had or raised eight youngsters/stepchildren.