Prolific game show host and media personality Wink Martindale, known for popular programs like Tic-Tac-Dough, Gambit, and Teenage Dance Party and for his stylish, affable onscreen persona, has died at 91. Martindale, who had been suffering from lymphoma, died on Tuesday at Eisenhower Health in Rancho Mirage, California, according to his publicist Brian Mayes.
Born Winston Conrad Martindale, the veteran host was born in Jackson, Tennessee on December 4, 1933. He began his career as a disc jockey in Jackson at the age of 17, and soon moved on to WHBQ in Memphis. That station notably played Elvis Presley’s first record, “That’s All Right,” on the radio for the first time on July 10, 1954, leading Martindale to call Presley’s mother and invite the singer in for a chat. “Elvis soon arrived at WHBQ for his first interview, and music was changed forever,” a press release notes. “Wink was the last living witness to ‘Presleymania’ and the birth of rock & roll.”
“I think that I was born with a desire to be a radio announcer,” Martindale once said, according to the New York Times. “I always had that great desire to sit behind a microphone. My first ‘mic’ was two paper cups attached to a string. It wasn’t long before I was sitting behind the real thing.”
Martindale worked at numerous radio stations over the years and broke into television as the host of Mars Patrol, a science-fiction themed children’s television series. He then became the host of Teenage Dance Party, on which Presley made an appearance on June 16, 1956.
Martindale created his own music, as well. He recorded 20 single records and seven albums. His 1959 spoken word single “Deck of Cards” went to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and sold more than one million copies.
Martindale made his game show host debut in 1964 on NBC’s What’s This Song?, which ran through 1965. He followed that up with Words and Music on NBC and Gambit on CBS. His biggest success was Tic-Tac-Dough, which he hosted from 1978 to 1985. Over the years, Martindale hosted more than 20 games shows, including High Rollers, The Last Word, The Great Getaway Game, Trivial Pursuit, Debt, and Instant Recall. He also created and executive-produced 1985 show Headline Chasers.
“I love working with contestants, interacting with the audience and to a degree, watching lives change,” Martindale once explained. “Winning a lot of cash can cause that to happen.”
The host continued to work in radio alongside television. He had stints at various stations, including KGIL-AM, KKGO-FM/KJQI, Gene Autry’s KMPC, and KABC, and recently made recurring appearances on The Howard Stern Show. He also made appearances on TV shows like The Bold and the Beautiful, The Chase, and The Eric Andre Show. In 2007, Martindale became one of the first inductees into the American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.
The host went by his iconic nickname for his entire career. In 2014, he told ABC News, “When I was a kid in Jackson, Tennessee, one of my playmates, Jimmy McCord, couldn’t say ‘Winston,’ which is my given name, and he had a speech impediment and it came out sounding like ‘Winky.’ So Winston turned into Winky, and then I got into the business and Wink [it was]! It served me well and I just kept Wink all these years.”
