Chuck Woolery, the genial, smooth-talking game show host of “Wheel of Fortune,” “Love Connection” and “Scrabble,” who later became a right-wing podcaster, attacks liberals and accuses the government of lying about COVID-19. He died. He was 83 years old.
Woolery died at his home in Texas with his wife, Christine, attending, Mark Young, a friend, friend and podcast host, said in an email early Sunday. “Chuck was a friend, a dear brother, and a great man of faith, and life would not be the same without him,” Young wrote.
Woolery, with his morning appearance, coiffed hair and witty banter, was inducted into the American Television Game Show Hall of Fame in 2007 and received a daytime Emmy nomination in 1978.
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In 1983, Woolery began an 11-year stint as host of the television show “Love Connection,” where he coined the phrase “We’ll be back in two minutes and two seconds,” a two-fingered signature he called “2 and 2.” In 1984, he hosted ” Scrabble TV show, where he simultaneously hosted two game shows on television until 1990.
“Love Connection,” which aired long before the dawn of dating apps, featured the story of either a single man or a single woman watching audition tapes of three potential mates and then choosing one of them to date.
Two weeks after the date, the guest would sit down with Woolery in front of the studio audience and tell everyone about the date. The audience will vote on the three contestants, and if the audience approves of the guest’s choice, “Love Connection” will offer to pay for a second date.
Woolery told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2003 that his favorite group of lovebirds was that of a 91-year-old man and an 87-year-old woman. He was so old that he said, “I remember the wagon trains.” Poor man. I took him on a balloon ride.
Other career highlights included hosting the shows “Lingo,” “Greed” and “The Chuck Woolery Show,” as well as hosting the short-lived syndicated revival of “The Dating Game” from 1998 to 2000 and an ill-fated talk show in 1991. . In 1992, he played himself in two episodes of the TV show “Melrose Place.”
Woolery became the subject of the Game Show Network’s first attempt at a reality show called “Chuck Woolery: Naturally Stoned” which premiered in 2003. He co-titled the 1968 pop hit by Woolery and his rock group Avant-Garde. . It lasted six episodes and was panned by critics.
Woolery began his television career on a show that became a mainstay. Although largely associated with Pat Sajak and Vanna White, “Wheel of Fortune” debuted on January 6, 1975 on NBC with Woolery welcoming the contestants and audience. Woolery, then 33, was trying to make it in Nashville as a singer.
“Wheel of Fortune” began life as a “Shoppers’ Bazaar”, featuring hangman-style puzzles and a roulette wheel. After Woolery appeared on “The Merv Griffin Show” singing “Delta Dawn,” Merv Griffin asked him to host the new show with Susan Stafford.
“I did an interview that lasted 15 or 20 minutes,” Woolery told The New York Times in 2003. “After the show, when Murph asked if I wanted to do a game show, I thought, ‘Great, a guy with a bad jacket and an equally bad mustache doesn’t care. With what you have to say – this is the man I want to be.”
NBC initially passed on it, but they retooled it as “Wheel of Fortune” and got the green light. A few years later, Woolery demanded a raise of up to $500,000 a year, which host Peter Marshall was offering on “Hollywood Squares.” Griffin declined and Woolery was replaced by weather reporter Pat Sajak.
“Chuck and Susie did well, and Wheel did well enough on NBC, though it never came close to the kind of ratings success that Jeopardy!” “It was fulfilled in its heyday,” Griffin said in his book Merv: Make the Good Life Last, a 2000s biography co-written by David Bender. Woolery earned an Emmy nod as host.
Woolery was born in Ashland, Kentucky, and served in the U.S. Navy before attending college. He played double bass in a folk trio, then formed the psychedelic rock duo The Avant-Garde in 1967 while working as a truck driver to support himself as a musician.
The Avant-Garde band, touring in a retooled Cadillac, had a Top 40 hit with “Naturally Stoned,” with Woolery singing, “When I set my mind on you alone/I can get a good feeling/I feel like I’m naturally stoned.”
After The Avant-Garde broke up, Woolery released his debut single “I Was Wrong” in 1969 and several singles with Columbia before transitioning to country music by the 1970s. He released two singles: “Forgive My Heart” and “Love Me, Love Me.”
Woolery wrote or co-wrote songs for himself and everyone from Pat Boone to Tammy Wynette. On Wynette’s 1971 album We Sure Can Love Each Other, Woolery wrote “The Joys of Being a Woman” with lyrics including “Watch our baby on the swing/Hear her laugh, hear her scream.”
After his television career ended, Woolery went into podcasting. In an interview with The New York Times, he called himself a gun rights activist and described himself as a liberal conservative and constitutionalist. He said he did not reveal his liberal Hollywood policies for fear of retaliation.
He teamed up with Mark Young in 2014 for the podcast “Blunt Force Truth” and quickly became a full-on supporter of Donald Trump while arguing that minorities don’t need civil rights and causing a firestorm by tweeting an anti-Semitic comment linking Soviet Communists to Judaism.
“President Obama’s popularity is an illusion that only he and his dwindling group of juice-drinking, anxious-dog-hugging, snowflake-hiding gangs have,” he said.
Woolery was also active online, retweeting articles from Conservative Brief, insisting that Democrats were trying to install a Marxist regime and publishing headlines such as “Impeach him! Impeach him!”. “Devastating photo leaks of Joe Biden.”
During the early stages of the pandemic, Woolery initially accused medical professionals and Democrats of lying about the virus in an attempt to hurt the economy and Trump’s chances at re-election to the presidency.
“The most terrible lies are the ones about Covid-19. Everyone is lying. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the media, the Democrats, our doctors, not everyone but most of them, who we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back.” “I’m tired of it,” Woolery wrote in July 2020.
Trump retweeted the post to his 83 million followers. By the end of the month, nearly 4.5 million Americans had been infected with COVID-19 and more than 150,000 people had died.
Just days later, Woolery changed his position, announcing that his son had contracted Covid-19. “To further clarify and add perspective, COVID-19 is real and it is here. “My son has tested positive for the virus, and I feel sympathy for those who are suffering, especially those who have lost loved ones.”
Woolery later clarified on his podcast that he never called COVID-19 a “hoax” or said “it’s not real,” just “we’ve been lied to.” Woolery also said that “it’s a huge honor when your boss retweets your thoughts and thinks it’s important enough to do so.”
In addition to his wife, Woolery is survived by his sons Michael and Sean and his daughter Melissa, Young said.