Wink Martindale, the genial game show host and an early TV interviewer
of Elvis Presley, dies at 91
[April 16, 2025]
By BETH HARRIS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Wink Martindale, the genial host of such hit game
shows as “Gambit” and “Tic-Tac-Dough” who also did one of the first
recorded television interviews with a young Elvis Presley, has died. He
was 91.
Martindale died Tuesday at Eisenhower Health in Rancho Mirage,
California, according to his publicist Brian Mayes. Martindale had been
battling lymphoma for a year.
“He was doing pretty well up until a couple weeks ago,” Mayes said by
phone from Nashville.
“Gambit” debuted on the same day in September 1972 as “The Price is
Right” with Bob Barker and “The Joker’s Wild” with Jack Barry.
“From the day it hit the air, ‘Gambit’ spelled winner, and it taught me
a basic tenant of any truly successful game show: KISS! Keep It Simple
Stupid,” Martindale wrote in his 2000 memoir “Winking at Life.” “Like
playing Old Maids as a kid, everybody knows how to play 21, i.e.
blackjack.”
“Gambit” had been beating its competition on NBC and ABC for over two
years. But a new show debuted in 1975 on NBC called “Wheel of Fortune.”
By December 1976, “Gambit” was off the air and “Wheel of Fortune” became
an institution that is still going strong today.
Martindale bounced back in 1978 with “Tic-Tac-Dough,” the classic X’s
and O’s game on CBS that ran until 1985.
“Overnight I had gone from the outhouse to the penthouse,” he wrote.
He presided over the 88-game winning streak of Navy Lt. Thom McKee, who
earned over $300,000 in cash and prizes that included eight cars, three
sailboats and 16 vacation trips. At the time, McKee’s winnings were a
record for a game show contestant.
“I love working with contestants, interacting with the audience and to a
degree, watching lives change,” Martindale wrote. “Winning a lot of cash
can cause that to happen.”
Martindale wrote that producer Dan Enright once told him that in the
seven years he hosted “Tic-Tac-Dough” he gave away over $7 million in
cash and prizes.
Martindale said his many years as a radio DJ were helpful to him as a
game show host because radio calls for constant ad-libs and he learned
to handle almost any situation in the spur of the moment. He estimated
that he hosted nearly two dozen game shows during his career.
Martindale wrote in his memoir that the question he got asked most often
was “Is Wink your real name?” The second was “How did you get into game
shows?”
He got his nickname from a childhood friend. Martindale is no relation
to University of Michigan defensive coordinator Don Martindale, whose
college teammates nicknamed him Wink because of their shared last name.
Born Winston Conrad Martindale on Dec. 4, 1933, in Jackson, Tennessee,
he loved radio since childhood and at age 6 would read aloud the
contents of advertisements in Life magazine.
He began his career as a disc jockey at age 17 at WPLI in his hometown,
earning $25 a week.
After moving to WTJS, he was hired away for double the salary by
Jackson’s only other station, WDXI. He next hosted mornings at WHBQ in
Memphis while attending Memphis State. He was married and the father of
two girls when he graduated in 1957.
Martindale was in the studio, although not working on-air that night,
when the first Presley record “That’s All Right” was played on WHBQ on
July 8, 1954.
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Host Wink Martindale looks at a card during game show, May 22, 1997.
(AP Photo/Nick Ut, File)
 Martindale approached fellow DJ
Dewey Phillips, who had given Presley an early break by playing his
song, to ask him and Presley to do a joint interview on Martindale’s
TV show “Top Ten Dance Party” in 1956. By then, Presley had become a
major star and agreed to the appearance.
Martindale and Presley stayed in touch on occasion through the
years, and in 1959 he did a trans-Atlantic telephone interview with
Presley, who was in the Army in Germany. Martindale’s second wife,
Sandy, briefly dated Presley after meeting him on the set of “G.I.
Blues” in 1960.
In 1959, Martindale moved to Los Angeles to host a morning show on
KHJ. That same year he reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart
with a cover version of “Deck of Cards,” which sold over 1 million
copies. He performed the spoken word wartime story with religious
overtones on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”
“I could easily have thought, ’Wow, this is easy! I come out here,
go on radio and TV, make a record and everybody wants to buy it!” he
wrote. “Even if I entertained such thoughts, they soon dissipated. I
learned in due time that what had happened to me was far from the
ordinary.”
A year later he moved to the morning show at KRLA and to KFWB in
1962. Among his many other radio gigs were two separate stints at
KMPC, owned by actor Gene Autry.
His first network hosting job was on NBC’s “What’s This Song?” where
he was credited as Win Martindale from 1964-65.
He later hosted two Chuck Barris-produced shows on ABC: “Dream Girl
’67” and “How’s Your Mother-in-Law?” The latter lasted just 13 weeks
before being canceled.
“I’ve jokingly said it came and went so fast, it seemed more like 13
minutes!” Martindale wrote, explaining that it was the worst show of
his career.
Martindale later hosted a Las Vegas-based revival of “Gambit” from
1980-81.
He formed his own production company, Wink Martindale Enterprises,
to develop and produce his own game shows. His first venture was
“Headline Chasers,” a coproduction with Merv Griffin that debuted in
1985 and was canceled after one season. His next show, “Bumper
Stumpers,” ran on U.S. and Canadian television from 1987-1990.
He hosted “Debt” from 1996-98 on Lifetime cable and “Instant Recall”
on GSN in 2010.
Martindale returned to his radio roots in 2012 as host of the
nationally syndicated “The 100 Greatest Christmas Hits of All Time.”
In 2021, he hosted syndicated program “The History of Rock ‘n’
Roll.”
In 2017, Martindale appeared in a KFC ad campaign with actor Rob
Lowe.
He is survived by Sandy, his second wife of 49 years, and children
Lisa, Madelyn ad Laura and numerous grandchildren. He was preceded
in death by his son, Wink Jr. Martindale's children are from his
first marriage which ended in divorce in 1972.
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