Chuck Woolery obit

Chuck Woolery, Host of ‘Wheel of Fortune’ and ‘Love Connection,’ Dies at 83

He also did some acting and was a singer in a band that had a Top 40 hit, "Naturally Stoned," in 1968. 

He was not on the list.

Chuck Woolery, the charismatic game show host who kicked off the long run of Wheel of Fortune before spending 11 years playing matchmaker on Love Connection, has died. He was 83.

 

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

 

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

 

After the Kentucky native performed “Delta Dawn” on The Merv Griffin Show, Griffin offered him a chance to audition as the host of a new game show he had just developed called Shopper’s Bazaar. Woolery beat out former 77 Sunset Strip star Edd “Kookie” Byrnes for the job, and the renamed Wheel of Fortune premiered on NBC on Jan. 6, 1975.

 

With the show pulling in a 44 share 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 pony up the rest, but that somehow infuriated Griffin, who threatened to take Wheel of Fortune to CBS, according to Woolery.

 

Not wanting to lose the game show, NBC withdrew the offer, and Griffin proceeded to fire Woolery and hire Pat Sajak. Also let go: original letter-turner Susan Stafford, who was replaced by Vanna White.

 

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

 

Woolery, however, rebounded quite nicely with the syndicated Love Connection, presiding over more than 2,000 episodes of that show from 1983-94. In 1986, he was making $1 million a year hosting that and NBC’s Scrabble, according to a 1986 article in People. (That year, the magazine pointed out, Love Connection was grossing $25 million a year and drawing 4.5 million viewers a day.)

 

Woolery also had his own CBS daytime morning show, which didn’t last long in competition with Live With Regis and Kathie Lee; co-hosted the Family Channel’s Home and Family; and was the face of other game shows including Lingo on the Game Show Network, Greed on Fox and a rebooted The Dating Game for syndication.

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

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

After The Avant-Garde floundered, Woolery stuck with it as a solo artist, and with an assist from comic Jonathan Winters, he appeared on The Tonight Show in 1972. He also landed a gig as Mr. Dingle, an elderly postman and shopkeeper, on the syndicated kids show New Zoo Revue and guest-starred on Love, American Style.

In 1974, he appeared with then-wife Jo Ann Pflug in the short film Sonic Boom and with Cheryl Ladd and Rosey Grier in the feature The Treasure of Jamaica Reef and was a featured vocalist on a new version of Your Hit Parade.

He earned a Daytime Emmy in 1978 for his work on Wheel of Fortune.

On Love Connection, a man or woman would watch audition tapes of three potential mates, then select one for a blind date. The show would pick up the tab for their night out — $75 when the show first went on the air.

The couple couldn’t talk to each other about their date until they were interviewed by Woolery on the show a couple of weeks later to see how it went. The studio audience was asked to vote on which of the three people in the audition phase they thought would be the best match, and sometimes there would be a second date. Other times, no way were these two ever going out again.

“This is really the one show I do that I’ll watch at home,” Woolery said in the People story. “I really like its unpredictability.”

For his Love Connection trademark, Woolery told viewers that the program would return after the commercials in “two and two” — two minutes and two seconds, the length of the break back then — and had a hand signal just for that.

In 1993, Entertainment Weekly asked Woolery is he “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, so where did you 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 by and large is gonna identify with that? I don’t think that works at all.”

More recently, Woolery, an avid fisherman, co-hosted with Young the right-wing podcast Blunt Force Truth.

He was married four times — including 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 children/stepchildren.

 

Actor

Jamie Kennedy, Sanaa Lathan, Will Forte, Reagan Gomez-Preston, Arianna Huffington, Seth MacFarlane, Kevin Michael Richardson, Craig Robinson, Jason Sudeikis, John Viener, Glenn Howerton, Alec Sulkin, Mike Henry, Nickie Bryar, and Aseem Batra in The Cleveland Show (2009)

The Cleveland Show

5.6

TV Series

Chuck Woolery (voice)

2010

1 episode

 

Brooke Elliott in Drop Dead Diva (2009)

Drop Dead Diva

7.5

TV Series

Dream Judge

Host

2009

1 episode

 

John C. McGinley, Zach Braff, Sarah Chalke, Donald Faison, Neil Flynn, Ken Jenkins, and Judy Reyes in Scrubs (2001)

Scrubs

8.4

TV Series

Chuck Woolery

2004

1 episode

 

Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, Michael Nesmith, and Peter Tork in Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees (1997)

Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees

7.1

TV Movie

Manager

1997

 

Tamera Mowry-Housley, Tim Reid, Jackée Harry, and Tia Mowry in Sister, Sister (1994)

Sister, Sister

6.3

TV Series

Chuck Woolery

1996

1 episode

 

Melrose Place (1992)

Melrose Place

6.0

TV Series

Chuck Woolery

1995–1996

2 episodes

 

Cold Feet (1989)

Cold Feet

4.8

Chuck Woolery

1989

 

Marla Gibbs and Jackée Harry in 227 (1985)

227

6.7

TV Series

Chuck Woolery

1989

1 episode

 

It's Garry Shandling's Show. (1986)

It's Garry Shandling's Show.

7.7

TV Series

Chuck Woolery

1987

2 episodes

 

Romance Theatre (1982)

Romance Theatre

5.9

TV Series

1982

5 episodes

 

Six Pack (1982)

Six Pack

6.0

T.V. Commentator #2

1982

 

Erik Estrada and Larry Wilcox in CHiPs (1977)

CHiPs

6.5

TV Series

Chuck Woolery (uncredited)

1980

1 episode

 

Sweepstakes (1979)

Sweepstakes

5.8

TV Series

Tyler

1979

1 episode

 

The Prize (1978)

The Prize

1978

 

A Guide for the Married Woman (1978)

A Guide for the Married Woman

5.2

TV Movie

Tennis Pro

1978

 

Sonic Boom

6.2

Short

Pilot Rogers

1975

 

The Treasure of Jamaica Reef (1974)

The Treasure of Jamaica Reef

3.2

Victor Spivak

1974

 

Love, American Style (1969)

Love, American Style

6.8

TV Series

Mr. Thompson (segment "Love and the Cozy Comrades")

1973

1 episode

 

New Zoo Revue (1972)

New Zoo Revue

7.5

TV Series

Mr. Dingle

1972–1977

 

Writer

Chuck Woolery in The Chuck Woolery Show (1991)

The Chuck Woolery Show

5.6

TV Series

Writer

1991

1 episode

Acting

Year     Title            Role            Notes

1972    New Zoo Revue            Mr. Dingle  

1973    Love, American Style            Mr. Thompson            Segment: "Love and the Cozy Comrades"

1973    ABC Saturday Morning Cartoons            Superman         For full preview special Sneak Peek

1974    Sonic Boom   Pilot Rogers Short film

1975    The Treasure of Jamaica Reef            Detective         Also known as Evil in the Deep

1978    A Guide for the Married Woman            Tennis Pro       Made for television

1979            $weepstake$    Tyler            Episode 4

1982            Romance Theatre                    "Marisol" Parts 1–5

1982    Six Pack    TV Commentator #2       

1989    227            Himself            Episode: "A Date to Remember"

1989    Cold Feet     Himself            Love Connection host on TV

1997    Hey, Hey, It's the Monkees            Chuck            Cameo as the nightclub owner

2004    Scrubs            Himself            Season 4 Episode 6

Television/radio

Year     Title            Notes

1975–81            Wheel of Fortune            Replaced by Pat Sajak

1983–94            Love Connection            Host

1984–90, 1993            Scrabble          Host

1991    The Chuck Woolery Show            65 episodes

1996–98            Home & Family            Co-host with Cristina Ferrare

1997–99            The Dating Game            Host

1999–2000            Greed            Host, 44 episodes

1999–2000            TV Land Ultimate Fan Search      

1999            Biography            Episode: Bob Barker: Master of Ceremonies

2002–07            Lingo            succeeded by Bill Engvall in 2011

2008    Think Like a Cat            Host

2012–2014            Save Us Chuck Woolery (radio show)   Host

2014–2024            Blunt Force Truth (podcast)            Co-host with Mark Young

2023    The Game Show Show   Game show documentary

2024    '80s Quiz Show            Host