Legendary game show host Wink Martindale died yesterday at the age of 91. He was born Winston Conrad Martindale, and got his nickname Wink from a childhood friend. He was known for hosting the gameshows Gambit (1972-1976), Tic-Tac-Dough (1978-1985), High Rollers (1987-1988), and Debt (1996-1998).
He started his career as a disc jockey in his hometown of Jackson, Tennessee. While attending Memphis State University, Martindale hosted mornings at WHBQ in Memphis. He was at their studios on July 10, 1959, though not on the air, when he noticed his colleague, DJ Dewey Phillips was getting quite a lot of listener reactions from a new song he was playing. That song was “That’s All Right”, Elvis’ first record. There was so much interest in the song that Phillips reportedly played it 14 times and received over 40 phone calls about it. The song had been recorded at Sam Phillips’ studios just a few days before, and Sam was in the studio when it first aired. Dewey wanted to interview Elvis that night, so Wink tried to call him, but his mother Gladys answered the phone. She said when he heard his song was going to be played on the radio, he went to the local movie theater to calm his nerves! Elvis was eventually persuaded to go to the studios for an interview that night. But he was interviewed without knowing the microphone was on – and Martindale said Elvis later admitted that he would have been unable to talk otherwise. Martindale stayed friends with Elvis and kept in touch throughout the years. When Elvis died in 1977, Martindale aired a nationwide tribute radio special in his honor. In another weird Elvis connection, Martindale’s second wife, Sandy, dated Elvis for a short time after meeting him on the set of “G.I. Blues” in 1960.
In 1959, Martindale’s version of the spoken-word song “Deck of Cards” went to #7 on the Billboard charts. He also performed it on the Ed Sullivan show in October that year.
Martindale received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was one of the first inductees into the American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in Las Vegas in 2007. Since 2021, he hosted a syndicated radio show called The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll, a 2-hour weekend lookback at music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Martindale died from lymphoma on April 15 at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, CA.