He was 83. Mark Young, a longtime friend and Woolery’s co-host on his podcast, said in an email early Sunday that Woolery died at his home in Texas with his wife, Kristen, by his side. “Chuck was a dear friend and brother and a tremendous man of faith, life will not be the same without him,” Young wrote. With his matinee idol looks, coiffed hair, and ease with witty banter, Woolery was inducted into the American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in 2007 and earned a daytime Emmy nomination in 1978.
Game Show Career
In 1983, Woolery began an 11-year run hosting TV’s Love Connection, where he popularized the line, “We’ll be back in two minutes and two seconds,” a two-fingered signature dubbed the “2 and 2.” In 1984, he began hosting TV’s Scrabble, running two game shows on TV concurrently until 1990. Love Connection, airing long before dating apps, had a premise that featured either a single man or single woman who would watch audition tapes of three potential mates and then pick one for a date.
A couple of weeks after the date, the guest would sit with Woolery in front of a studio audience and tell everybody about the date. The audience voted on the three contestants, and if they agreed with what the guest decided, Love Connection offered to pay for a second date. Woolery said in 2003 that his favorite couple on lovebirds was an 91-year-old man and a woman 87. “She had so much eye makeup on, she looked like a stolen Corvette. He was so old he said, ‘I remember wagon trains.’ The poor guy. She took him on a balloon ride.”
Early Career and Wheel of Fortune
Woolery started his TV career at a show that’s now ubiquitous. While most remember it with Pat Sajak and Vanna White, Wheel of Fortune premiered Jan. 6, 1975, on NBC, with Woolery as host, greeting contestants and the audience. Woolery was 33 at the time and still trying to make it in Nashville as a singer. Wheel of Fortune began its life as Shopper’s Bazaar and featured Hangman-style puzzles and a roulette wheel. After Woolery appeared on The Merv Griffin Show singing Delta Dawn, Merv Griffin approached him to host the new show with Susan Stafford.
“I had an interview that stretched to 15, 20 minutes,” Woolery told The New York Times in 2003. “After the show, when Merv asked if I wanted to do a game show, I thought, ‘Great, a guy with a bad jacket and an equally bad mustache who doesn’t care what you have to say — that’s the guy I want to be.'” NBC rejected it initially, but they revamped it as Wheel of Fortune and greenlit it. Several years later, Woolery demanded a salary of $500,000 a year or what host Peter Marshall earned on Hollywood Squares. Griffin refused and replaced Woolery with weather reporter Pat Sajak. “Both Chuck and Susie did a fine job, and Wheel did well enough on NBC, although it never approached the kind of ratings success that Jeopardy! achieved in its heyday,” Griffin said in Merv: Making the Good Life Last, an autobiography from the 2000s co-written by David Bender. Woolery earned an Emmy nod as host.
Music Career and Other Ventures
Born in Ashland, Ky., Woolery served in the U.S. Navy attended college while playing double bass in a folk trio before co-founding the psychedelic rock duo the Avant-Garde in 1967, working as a truck driver to make ends meet as a musician. The Avant-Garde, appearing in a reminted Cadillac hearse, had the Top 40 hit Naturally Stoned, with Woolery singing, “When I put my mind on you alone/I can get a good sensation/Feel like I’m naturally stoned.”
After The Avant-Garde broke up, Woolery issued his debut solo single I’ve Been Wrong in 1969 and several more singles with Columbia before turning to country by the 1970s. He released two solo singles, Forgive My Heart and Love Me, Love Me. Woolery wrote or co-wrote songs for himself and others including Pat Boone to Tammy Wynette. For Wynette’s 1971 album We Sure Can Love Each Other, Woolery wrote The Joys of Being a Woman with lyrics containing “See our baby on the swing / Hear her laugh, hear her scream.”
Pivot to Podcasting and Political Views
After the TV career was folded, Woolery went into podcasting. In an interview with the New York Times, he called himself a gun-rights activist and described himself as a conservative libertarian and constitutionalist. He said he hadn’t revealed his politics in liberal Hollywood for fear of retribution. He teamed up with Mark Young for the podcast Blunt Force Truth in 2014 and quickly transitioned to full supporter of Trump while arguing that minorities don’t require civil rights and sparked a firestorm when he tweeted an anti-Semitic statement linking Soviet Communists with Judaism.
“President Obama’s popularity is a fantasy only held by him and his dwindling legion of juice-box-drinking, anxiety-dog-hugging, safe-space-hiding snowflakes,” he said. Woolery also was active online, retweeting articles from Conservative Brief, insisting Democrats were trying to install a system of Marxism and spreading headlines like “Impeach him! Devastating photo of Joe Biden leaks.” “The most outrageous lies are the ones about COVID-19. Everyone is lying. The CDC, media, Democrats, our doctors, not all but most, that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it,” Woolery wrote in July 2020. “To further clarify and add perspective, COVID-19 is real and it is here.
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