Alex Trebek: The Cursing, Truck Driving, Genius Playboy Bellhop (Who Also Hosted Jeopardy)

I learned. And it was also really nice to go in and have somebody teaching you and sort of be like, oh, good, I've I've been doing that right, right, that is a nice thing. Yeah, I did. I did hope that it would be some like dope chef knife ninja skills, but I guess I should have expected more because it's definitely for like couples to take. I did, yeah, you know, I couldn't go with you. So you're all alone and ten couples looking like a real loser, and they're like,

I'm professionally ariad. Actually so frequently as often as I could said well my wife doesn't she lives in Niagara. Yeah, you wouldn't know her. Yeah, she's beautiful, but she never leaves the house. In Canada. It was really good. It was really good food. I did learn some seasoning tricks and oh and I learned what to do with an extra bulb of garlic. You just you just throw it in the oven. You just cook it until it's soft, and you just squeezed out like a paste and they

just can put that on some bread or whatever. I'm in. Yeah, I know, if you roast garlic, it's kind of sweet, like it's not the it doesn't give you the kick that garlic does when you cook it dish sick on a pan or whatever. Another thing I learned, they said, the more you cut garlic, the more spicy and garlicy it is. Yeah, And so if you really want to get a lot of flavor out of your garlic, chop

it very fine. And if you just want to keep it kind of mild, you know, just slice it a few times and then you just baked the whole thing like that. You roast those clothes whole and they come out almost sweet. Yeah. I couldn't go because I was in Orlando. They have their winter Mini Fringe festival in in January, so I got to go to that for just a couple of days and see a few shows and submissions are open. You were there for We drove in, we saw two shows and fell asleep. We woke up,

we saw two shows, and we drove home. That's how we roll over here. It's crazy, but it was worth it. It was really great to go well, speaking of theater, speaking of weddings, speaking of Canadians, all the things we've mentioned, all the things we've mentioned. We've got a brand new episode today. I didn't think this was going to happen, but in doing the research for our last episode, I just came up with pages and pages of of of other things to talk about around Jeopardy, because you know,

last week we learned about merv and Julianne Griffin. They were the TV power couple who created Jeopardy, which is, of course one of the most popular game shows in the world. I really thought that was going to be all the ridiculous romance that we got out of it, because I mean, it's a it's a fast paced quiz show where contestants just spit out rapid fire questions. They're all trying to out trivia themselves for for big prizes.

So I didn't think there'd be a lot of romance involved, but somehow several people actually had their their buzzers pressed by their opponents. Sparks went flying after the final Jeopardy answer was questioned in more ways than and we're going to get to know some of their stories today, but first, honestly, we've just got to hear all about the super sweet romance between one of the world's best TV hosts, Alex

Trebek and his beloved wife Jean. Let's do it, hey the French, come listen well, Elien and Diana got some chories to tell. There's no match making, a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships. I love. It might be any type of person at all and abstract constrom a concrete wall. But if there's a story with a second glance ridiculous role that a production of I Heart Radio.

All right, So to me, Alex Trebek is like right up there with Mr Rogers, Uh, Dolly Parton, Bob Ross, Sherry Lewis, you know, I don't know, Keanu Reeves, you know, Brendan Fraser. Just these people that you look at and you're like, you're just a kind person and you want goodness in this world. Yeah, and like, in doing research about him is really interesting to find that he is very different from his Jeopardy persona but also a piece of ship. No. No, it seems like this is very

true too. It's an interesting contract. Yeah, and now we're gonna close Alex trick for the monster he is. No No. Alex Trebeck was born in Already in Ontario, Canada. His father was actually born in Ukraine, and his last name was originally but we learned in Pam Pollock's book Who Was Alex Trebek that his father changed it after he moved to Canada, so it was easier for English speakers

to pronounces oldest time. Alex Trebek's mother was Lucille Say, okay, okay, come on, wouldn't it be cool if it was Lucille Ball, Like, wouldn't that blow everybody's mind? I don't know, I'd be like. Alex Trebek was a Nepo baby. As a child, Alex Trebek was very protective of his younger sisters, and one time, when he was just seven years old, he saw his little five year old sister playing out on a frozen lake, very common in the Northeast Canada. Now he ran over.

He stopped and he said, no, you can't go out there. It's dangerous. You shouldn't be planned on a lake unless you absolutely know it's completely frozen. So he did that thing where he was like, you know, to show you how dangerous this is, I'm going to go test the lake. And the seven year old Alex Trebek walks out on this frozen lake and of course the ice creaked and cracked and he fell straight through into the frozen river.

Oh my god. It was only because a rail worker happened to be passing by uh and saw him and pulled him out of the water that Alex was saved. Wow, that's crazy. There's gotta be a better way, Like can you not throw a cement block or something, well, but then you would break it week in the integrity, right, I guess. So I feel that they should have come up with a better way. That's all I'm saying. After all this time dealing with frozen lakes, there's gotta be

just a seven year old didn't know. Okay, fair enough, seven, he doesn't know the best way to do everything. Moving on. Alex Trebek grew up in a French English bilingual household, and he went to both French and English speaking schools, and he went to a prep school starting in ninth grade. Jealous of that. I wish I grew up in a bilingual household, because no chance I'm to learn it now.

But the same year that he went to prep school, Alex's parents divorced, and his mother moved to Detroit, Michigan, to be near her sisters, and Alex started acting out. You know that's common with children of divorced His grades suffered. At the end of the semester, the prep school told him not to come back next year, which is pretty rude thing for a prep school to say, but I guess you gotta keep your grades to a certain level

of certain standards. So they were like, get out of here, Alex. Yeah, we're preparing you for you know what happens when you don't show up and you're not prepared. Um. So his dad drove out to the school and begged them to let Alex stay. So he did get another chance, but from then on he had to be sure to be like an exemplary student, and he excelled in all his classes. I'm trying to think of the headmaster who pulls a young Alex trebek in and says, you're just so good

with facts, kid, you just can't learn things. You know, we teach you stuff, we ask you questions, and you don't have the answers. Alex Trebec, He's like, one day, I'll show you. I'll have all the answers. After Alex graduated, he joined a military program that would help him pay for college, but he only lasted three days. That's three days longer than I would last. The first two days he was harassed by older students who loved to haze

the new recruits. But on day three, the final straw came when the academy told him he had to cut his hair. Trebec wrote in his memoirs, quote I had a good head of hair. So he's like, hell no, And he called his dad. He said, I'm coming home. Alex said his dad was incredibly supportive throughout his life. He wrote that his father wasn't a well educated man, and he wasn't particularly bright, but quote, he was just all heart. He just poured his love out for me.

It didn't matter what I did. I was never a disappointment to him. Alex got his first job as a bellhop at the hotel where his dad worked as a chef, and he actually had a credible work ethic and he was seriously dedicated to punctuality. He's one of those guys who was like, if you're not ten minutes early, you're late. Right. I can just see him in a little outfit, but they have to wear the little bell hop outfit at this I'm going to assume because I want to that yes, yes,

with that little hat. Yes, I love it. I wish he had hosted Jeopardy as a bell just one time to get in touch with his roots. But look, Alex Trebeck, Mr. Punctuality is doing really well in school. But he was not all goody two shoes. One of the more surprising facts about this guy this this calm, cool, collected Canadian that apparently Alex Trebek curses like a sailor. What I

can't even imagine. Amazing. He sounds so class like, his voice is so classy that I feel like if I heard him say a curse word, I would just laugh. But I don't Maybe you would be really scared. I don't know, some ships going down. Your family grew up with some cursing, right, Oh yeah, mine didn't like. When I was a kid, like, no one in my family curse, so it was weird to hear my parents curse when I did. I don't know what change because we definitely

weren't cursing for a long time. And then it was like my brother was like feeling himself at whatever age boys do, and they're like, I'm must start, you know, because we loved action movies, so we would watch the lethal weapon, you know, whatever, whatever, so you would just say whatever quote, and of course it makes people laugh when a kid curses. Oh God, so you keep doing it because you want to make people laugh anyway. So I think it was more about that. But now now

we all curse. So I don't know what happened. We were a bad influence on our parents or something because they used to care, but now they don't care. They're over it. Well. Alex Trebek said that, you know, he was too good about everything else. He needed something different. He didn't smoke or drink or do any drugs or anything, so he needed a vice, uh, to make himself stand out like one of the guys. He said, quote, I've started saying spe words so busy eating buckets could eat

his Mr. Truck. That's not a real quote. That's just what I like to imagine that he sounded like. In reality, he did say that he did need this vice, but quote, it didn't help me become one of the guys. It really just made me look like a jerk. Alright, fair enough, it's fair well. He took his work seriously and in nineteen sixty one he was studying at the University of Ottawa during the day and working at the Canadian Broadcasting

Corporation at night. He took every gig to come his way and eventually ended up reading this CBC National radio news. He definitely had a good radio news for you. In sixty six, he hosted his first quiz show, a game for high schoolers called Reach for the Top. He hosted classical music programs on the radio. He hosted sports games like curling, horse racing, and skating, so the classy sports. He was not like call on the football games. He even did his own morning radio DJ show in the

early seventies. That's when the cursing came in handy, and in v four Alex Trebeck found a woman he would soon call his wife. Her name was Elaine Howard of Columbus, Ohio, and if you were around in the nineteen sixties, you might know her better by her pseudonym Teddy Howard, which she used while working as a playboy bunny to trot. Elaine and her first husband, Louis Calais moved to Toronto

and they had a daughter named Nicki. While she was there, she started a party planning business and a promo agency. Obviously this after she stopped being a playboy bunny, and eventually she even got her own talk show with h c h TV titled called Calais, where she would really push the boundaries by talking about sex topics. And remember this is the late sixties, so kind of a big deal. They were like sex the one word you can't say

on television. Right. On that show, she interviewed a woman named Xaviera Hollander, who was someone who had gone from working as a call girl to eventually becoming New York Cities leading madam in the nineteen sixties. Now, Hollander was arrested and forced to leave the US, and this is where she ended up doing this interview in Canada. So future episode alert, we go see if we could dig

up the story. Yeah, right now, We could not find this interview, but apparently it was salacious enough to get Elaine's show canceled too far called calais if you've gone too fine. Trying to imagine the question she would have asked New York Cities leading madam. You know that would get her show canceled in the late sixties. So it might have been, you know, like, did justs go all the way up to your knees? You know, one guy

tell my foot? No, she might have named names, That's what I want to know, unless she might have said somebody's name and they were like, we can't tell anybody that he was visiting, you know, your brothel or whatever. Trudeau's dad, Remember we did the episode about him. Oh no, Trudeau Speculation Station Davierra Hollanders spilled the beans about Pierre Trudeau and they had to cancel call after or she's like the wife Mrs Trudeau came and met Mick Jaggers. Right,

that's it. They were like, turn it up all the plug. Well after that show got canceled, Elaine ended up posting a more typical morning show called Canada a m This job was also short lived because apparently there was quickly a mutual agreement that she was not a good fit for a typical morning show. I don't like to get up this early really more of a late night kind of gal. I mean, I got fired for being too outspoken on my sex talk show, so maybe I shouldn't

be waking people up in the market. That's such a good point. You want somebody very chill in the mat. But getting and losing this job did lead to her meeting Alex Treppek. Now. She and Trebek got married in nineteen seventy four, a year after her divorce from her first husband. Unfortunately, there's very little information about their actual marriage, except that they did not have any kids together, but Alex did adopt Elaine's daughter, Nikki, who was six when

they got married. Their marriage lasted seven years. They divorced amicably in ne and they stayed on good terms. Elaine went on to found the company sent Seal, which created like a new system for packaging perfume samples. Maybe she's the reason you get those magazines like the little flap that you could open and smell it. Maybe she came up with that because that sounds like a scent steal. I know, uh, Speculation station she had been at the

Flappy thing. She married a TV producer named Peter Carriss in two thousand and one, and she's mostly stayed out of the spotlight. Of course, Alex Trebek did not stay out of the spotlight. Decidedly stepped into it. A few years after their divorce. He got one of the biggest spotlights in the world. We already told y'all about the Jeopardy reboot in the last episode and how Lucille Ball encouraged merv Griffin to hire Alex Trebeck for the job,

and sure enough, in he taped his first episode. In an interview with Washington Post, Lois Feinstein, a contestant from the reboots first episode, said it took two and a half hours to film, but Alex quote maintained calm through the whole thing. That's wild and for two and a half hours for one episode. I don't remember if we mentioned this in the last episode, but normally they would shoot five episodes of Jeopardy per day, in like an eight hour day. They're just back to back boom boom boom.

What took so long this time? They said, it was just a lot of starts and stops, flubs, it was his first time they were it was the first time bringing the show back, so they just had to get back in the groove again. But he didn't get frustrated. He was just he was like, all right, let's take it again. Let's go again. That's a good trying to keep be Alex Trebek in my day to day. You

really do. I mean especially uh, you know, when you're working in television, everything is so high stakes and everything is so everything is last minute. There is You're you're going to be shocked if you ever walk into a TV set and see how unprepared everything is because you can't because you don't know what's going to happen until it's happening. A lot of the time, like all the scripts and planning in the world can't really prepare you. Um. So there there is a lot of starting and stopping.

Um and something like a live game show with a studio audience and everything, I can imagine that be you could get tripped up in a lot of places you wouldn't expect. Another contestant, Jim Topkins McLean competed in nine, said that while they were shooting, a kid shouted out an answer during the gameplay and at first Trebek was kind of irritated about this, but then he looked over. He realized that it was a very young boy, only

like eight or nine years old. So Trebek walked over, sat down and just talked to this kid, and Tompkins McClean said, quote, the whole audience fell in love with Alex Trebek in that moment. He said, quote, I'm a school teacher, and now that's how I scold people. I think, what would Alex Trebek do? All these contestants talked about how Alex was so focused on them and who they were and what they did with their time. They all

just felt so welcomed by him. In the early nineties, a lot of these contestants were in an age where they still remembered Art Fleming, who everybody loved as a Jeopardy host, So Alex had to really work to win them over, but he did it with like no problem at all. I thought, that's pretty important to like make him all feel comfortable, because then they can perform better. You know, like if you made him feel really like I'm the guy and you know people are watching for me,

you probably get a worse performance at all. All the contestants. It's such like an added layer of like what's important about absolute lutely you know. We'll talk about this a little later in the episode. But you show up to be on Jeopardy and they filmed five episodes a day, all the contestants show up at the same time, and

you don't know when you're going on. They draw names to figure out who's next right before they tape, so you might get there at eight am and not shoot your episode till four and not know you're shooting your episode till three. And so you've got that on top of a lot of these people have never been on camera before, so they've got to go be TV stars for twenty two minutes um and remember everything they ever learned, so they're probably very stressed out. Meanwhile, someone's like, what's

your favorite movie? And I'm like, I've never seen a movie or my brain is completely can't remember anything right. And the next six years, Alex was a celebrity bachelor, the kindest, calmst smartest man on camera who was apparently the quote most talking and mother love and South in Hollywood when he was off camera. Just kidding, that's not a real No one ever said that about him, and he never said it. We assume, I mean he curses,

so speculation Station. That's what it sounds like when he actually did say that at some point, But it doesn't sound like he was very lucky in love. Once in a contestant guest that Flamingos only mate once a year, and Trabec responded, quote correct, Flamingos and I have a great deal in common. I love an intellectual burn on yourself. But in Alex Trebek met the woman who he said was his soul mate even though she was twenty four years younger than him. And we will come back with

more right after this. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So. Jean Curravan was born in nineteen sixty three in Green Lawn, New York, to a small, tight knit Catholic family. She and her older brother Chris, and her younger sister Audrey were incredibly close and this made it really hard for her to leave New York for California to go to Pepperdine University. But she went, and while she was there, tragedy struck the family when her older brother was killed

in a car accident. She finished college, but she was still really grief struck. She didn't know how she would move forward, and she had a job doing bookkeeping for a man in Malibu. In she kind of wondered, you know, do I stay on the West coast or do a head back east? But then a friend of her boss started coming by regularly, and although he was two decades older than her, she thought he was just so charming and kind and smart. He'd come by the house for

lunch and she would join them. Eventually they started playing backgammon together. In a blog on guidepost dot com, Jean said, quote, I knew he was on some TV show, but he never said much about it, and I didn't ask, like, who wants to talk about work? I don't want to be that guy. Probably everybody asked you about this all the time. It's probably some boring sean. Yeah. Right. So one day she called her mom back in New York and she said, quote, I met this nice guy. His

name's Alex Trebek. And her mom like me, she said, quote, don't you know who he is? She did not clearly, not Mom, I said it very casually. Alex eventually did officially ask Jean out. He invited her to a first date dinner at his house. She said that she was so nervous that she was afraid she'd mispronounced her own name. Quote. But Alex is really down to earth, much more casual

than he is on the show. Alex said, you know, the age difference definitely was tough at first, he wrote in his memoirs quote, but then I thought, the hell with it, will make it work. Jean herself said that she could tell he was a little wanted to be cautious about that age gap, so she didn't try to

push him about it. That kind of took it one day at a time, and his friend Bob Murphy told People magazine that although he and all his friends had been trying to set Alex up with someone for a year's quote, he was looking for a gene and then he found her. And Jean had met a man who helped her find her way out of her grief and realized that, you know, the future could look bright and happy again. On her twenty six birthday in nine, Alex gave Jean a pair of black velvet pants and a

matching Ballero jacket. You could not be more stylish in right than some black velvet pants and I'm matching Bolero jacket. That's all I know. She probably had a nice like satin shell top underneath it. Then he said, wait, here's a little something else, and he handed her a little wicker box with a six team carrots sapphire ring surrounded by six carrots of diamonds. This sounds insane, and it's also in a wicker box, which ange to me. I feel like i'd have my tracations would be like all

over the place, she told People magazine. Quote. It took my breath away. I mean it was a rock, more like a boulder, she continued. Quote. Then he popped the question, and I went all dumb. I think I said what which I love? Because he clearly popped the answer, and she questioned what. No, of course she said yes, And soon her father, who Alex hadn't met yet, arranged an engagement party for them in New York on a boat

just off the coast of Long Island. Alex was only two years younger than her dad, and he wrote quote, when Jeannie introduced me to him, he took one look at me and said, I guess I won't be calling you son. Were the same age, because we're the same age. They married on April nine, and when the minister said, do you Alex take Jean to be your wife? Alex Trebek said, quote, the answer is yes, yes, of course, he said. He got a big laughs. His memoir, he writes, quote,

that's me always going for the joke. Oh yeah, that's what I think of Alex Trebek. First things first, he goes with a joke. That's one of the things that you've learned about in his memoir and from Gene Though, is that off camera? That is just a real jokester all the time? That's cool. I feel like it's a lot of jokes like that though, you know, kind of dad jokes, yeah, or like really smart jokes like oh no, that No, that was good too. There was a thinker.

Remember that joke you told two weeks ago. I just got it. I laughed so loud last night when I finally figured it out. I was I was perusing an atlas, and I totally got the joke you told about the bearing straight well. Within three weeks of their wedding, they learn they were pregnant with their first son, Matthew. They said they knew what they were gonna have kids, but they weren't expecting that quickly but then in they had a daughter named Emily, and their family also stayed very

tight with his adoptive daughter, Niki. Nikki worked on production in Jeopardy and other shows and movies. She was a model, she was a musician. She did all kinds of stuff. This does all kind of stuff. She's still around. Nikki said that Alex, who she called Dad, took her to a wine symposium in Hawaii where she got to sit next to Vincent Price. She said, quote needless to say, it was unforgettable. And on that trip, Alex told Nikki that he was going to propose to Gene. Nikki said, quote,

I could see how happy he was. Nikki herself is only a few years younger than Jeans, so the two of them became more like close friends than you know, stepmother and daughter. So my wife is almost the same age as my daughter, and I am almost the same age as my wife's father. Weird generational divide. Their families look like anything, okay, And some of the best stuff about the Trebeks, as we've been saying, is learning how different he is in his personal life from the Alex

Trebek that we see on camera. People Magazine called him quote a man who keeps his house better homes and gardens, neat hangs dress shirts on light hangers and sports shirts on dark hangers, and keeps his spice rack alphabetically arranged. But Jean says that while it's his job to be astute, perfect and articulate on the air quote, he certainly doesn't want to be that way at home. People think he goes to bed in a suit. He doesn't. Maybe his

birthday suit right. Maybe he's got like Super Mario pajamas, real lacky you wouldn't expect. Oh, I love it. It's like Alex Trebek and hiss like dinosaur footie pajamas. He's like, I like to keep it young. An audience member said on Cora that quote. As soon as they said cut, Trebek practically turned into Robin Williams. He started telling Joe Oaks and did an imitation of Pacino and Scarface. Then when the director says they're about to come back from commercial,

he goes back to being game show host. Alex. Okay, what impression of Pacino sniffing up some ship like say hello to my little this? What is friend? That's right? Others echoed similar sentiments, calling him silly, a goofball, and

a prankster. He apparently loved it when he was parodied by Will Farrell on sn L or Eugene Levy on STTV, which I learned I hadn't seen the Eugene Levy one, but I learned that very similarly was presented Trebecca, someone who was very easily frustrated, got angry and stuff, kind of like Will Ferrell did, which, of course is like the antithesis. I know, I guess that is a funny joke, but that's funny. They both went the same direction. Alex Trebek also had a friendly right will read with Wheel

of Fortune host Patch stage Jack. Several times for April Fool's Day, they would surprise everyone by switching shows without anyone knowing ahead of time. I have to ask, anyone does that include? Like did people show up at Wheel of Fortune for work and they're like, what's Alex trac? Yeah? What I read is that it was basically nobody knew. That's just that's hilarious. Now. Alex and Jean Trebeck never really liked the Hollywood life too much. They're both homebodies.

Alex like to drive a pickup truck and do home repairs. She said his garage looked like a you know, like a tinkerer's workshop. He was also apparently like toughest nails. Not only did he do the Olympic torch run in nineties six from Florida to Atlanta, in two thousand four, he actually fell asleep behind the wheel of his pickup and he flew forty five ft over an embankment and crashed into a ditch. Damn. Unfortunately, no one else was hurt, and Alex himself was back to shooting Jeopardy only four

days later. Who which I mean? If I stubbed my toe, I'm out of work for a week, you know. In two thousand seven, when Alex was sixty seven years old, he suffered a minor heart attack. His ex wife, Elaine, was the one who rushed into the hospital, and she said that she begged him there to retire from Jeopardy, but within a month he was back shooting the show again.

In two thousand and eight teen, he fell and in his head on the bathtub and had to have surgery to remove blood clots from his brain, and once again right back to work. Dang. And then, of course I would love to not have to get to this, but we do have to get to the sad part. In two thousand nineteen, Trebek was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.

He and Jean had been traveling a lot. They were in Israel when he started having stomach pains and they were visiting New York when his doctors called saying they had some concerns, and when they caught the cancer, they saw that it had already spread to his stomach. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most dangerous because it spreads very quickly and has no early detection measures. So Jean said, all the feelings of losing her brother rushed back to her.

She was so worried how Alex would handle it, but she wrote that quote right away, he exhibited that same strength he always had. His attitude wasn't why me, but much more okay, what do we do? He did not hide the news from it his audience, she wrote, but went public right away, and the outpouring of support and love was immediate and overwhelming. Jeane points out that most of his fans have known him longer than she has, so they, you know, probably felt similarly to her that,

like somebody really important is very sick right now. They celebrated their thirtieth anniversary. Trebek wrote in his memoir quote, She's kept me alive if it weren't for Geane. I had to put myself out of this a long time ago because the treatment, said Ben rough. Sometimes he was getting chemo once a week, and this started immediately after his diagnosis, and he said that sometimes it was painful, made him feel really depressed and wonder if it was

worth going through. But he wrote, quote, that would have been a massive betrayal of my wife and soulmate, Jean, who had given her all to help me survive. When he wasn't working on the show, they would take walks together when he felt up for it. They would watch TV, or they would sit on their swing in the backyard. Uh, they're they're kind of spiritual, and so she said, you know, there's a lot of just being thankful for the sun

on your face and things like that. Um and Alex did continue doing the show, even though sometimes it was hard for him to, you know, concentrate for longer periods of time or to stand for the whole five episode tapings. They started to kind of cut that back a little bit. Gene and Alex would watch Jeopardy together. Jean wrote, quote, of course he knows most of the answers, but he never tells me. I'd be tough to be like no spoilers. He's like, I know all the answers. You find the question.

And then in two thousand nineteen, a contestant named Drew Gauer from Gainesville, Georgia, wagered one thou dollars out of his two thousand dollar earnings in Final Jeopardy, and for his question, he wrote, what is we love you Alex. When Trebek revealed the response, he choked up. He said, quote, oh that's very kind, thank you. But he then caught his composure and said cost you. You're left with five bucks. Jean later said quote you could see him like, oh,

don't make me cry here. But I love it. I think it meant the world to him. That's nice, Alex. Trebek continued to host Jeopardy despite his illness. Sam Anderson wrote in New York Times quote it was a dignified refusal to surrender to doom. He was the squarest possible existentialist hero, a man who holds the answer to every single trivia question, but not to the great final question of death, and yet he keeps showing up anyway, reading

his clues, giving us every last answer he can. Trebec taped his final episode on October, just over a week before his death on November eight, at eighty years old. He had written in his memoir that quote, I've got a framed image. Jeannie gave it to me. It's a line from our favorite movie, Wuthering Heights. Whatever our souls are made of, yours and mine are the same. That's the way I look at our relationship. We are one

soul in two bodies. On auguste Jean, their two children, Matthew and Emily, and his adopted daughter Nikki, attended the dedication of the Alex Trebek stage at Sony Pictures Soundstage Studio ten, where Jeopardy is filmed. So they named the stage for him. That's nice. And you know, he said, he said, one thing they'll never say of me is that I was taken too soon. He said, I did so much, you know, I guess that's true. Eight is a good run, yeah, and and and a very full year,

you know. But it's still sad. I mean, especially someone like that, you have to think was in people's living rooms, like every night that long, you know, you get you get attached. I didn't. I'm not a religious Jeopardy watcher myself, but I could see a lot of people being like really affected by that. We watched a lot when I was a kid. Um, not every night, but we watched a lot. And you know, even not having watched for you know, more of my adult life, he's still such

an icon. It just he really does feel like someone, you know, because his presence, his image is just so ubiquitous and present all the time. Yeah, I mean he hosted Jeopardy my entire life, so he was like, I mean, everyone knew him, Like he's just such an I yeah, like you say, a pop culture icon. Everyone knows his name, they know what he sounds like. Even if you don't

watch the show. He was just such a big part of the culture that, uh, I don't know, even not watching it, I was like, well, they can't get anyone else to host the show. Was like, I don't trust none of y'all. We mentioned in the last episode. It is different. I mean you know that they're they're both

doing a fine job, but you can't help. But you know, you don't want to compare but you can't help but be thinking about Trebek all the time, right, which makes me think when he took over for Art Fleming, he must have had a similar Like even though Art was post for way less time, obviously he must add a similar Like. Everybody's got this guy his voice, you know, in their head for this format and I have to really like make it my own. But he had it

for thirty you know, thirty years or whatever. Like. Yeah, Like we were listening to the weird Al Jeopardy song, which I loved growing up. Um Risk Dempsey on our Instagram post pointed out that's weird Al was gave the Jeopardy that bump. That weird album song references Art Fleming. It was it was the early eighties, so it was pre Trebek came out. Um but I never saw Fleming myself, but people did love him. But we all Alex Trebec and uh, we're gonna just clean up all the onions

that someone's been cutting in here. I've got to get this lotion sun sunscreen out of my eye. Um, but we're gonna have some fun when we come back. The Tripecs and the Griffins are certainly not the only love story around Jeopardy. Several couples have met on or around the show. We're gonna take a quick look at a few of them right after this break. Welcome back everyone. Okay, So Jeopardy ain't all answers and questions. It's also a total trivia tunnel of love. That's not what I would

have been at all. You can't think of Jeopardy without thinking of getting it off all hot and bothered. Well, a blog from Jeopardy website in ten says that at least seven couples have formed romantic connections on Jeopardy, and then we found at least two more since then. The earliest that we could find was actually from the Art Fleming Days in seventy eight. A man named Carlo Pan

was selected to be a contestant on Jeopardy. Like we said, they filmed several episodes per day, So everybody shows up at the beginning of the day and you kind of figure out when you're gonna go on while you're just sitting in a green room. So he shows up and a bunch of contestants are already packed into that green room, uh, you know, chatting with each other, telling their stories of how they came to be on the show, and in the middle of the room there was a woman named

Deborah telling her story. She said that she absolutely killed it. In her test run to get on the show. She was telling everyone that one of her clues had been this is the longest song title of as Cap record. Uh, anybody, I'll give you a second. Anybody know the answer to the the question to that one? Uh? Is there a song version of don't be a Medicine South Central I'll

drinking your juice in the hood? Or well, at least as of it was, how could you believe me when I said I loved you when you know I've been a liar all my life? That is uh, fred as Stairs from the movie Royal Wedding, Oh so little victim blaming. Well, you know I was a liar, so you know it's

your fault. It's your fault. Well, Deborah was telling everyone in the room how they said she was only the second person in the show's history to answer that question correctly and then quote, this tall, skinny man with curly hair and a terrible brown suit put his hand out for me to shake and said, I was the first Games. It was Carlo Game Carlo was like, this is the one chance, the best set up I've ever had. There's not it's not gonna come around again. Even if it

wasn't interested in Debra. He's like, let me allow me. You don't get a layup better than this. Every real this is basically scripted, Like I need to, I have to take advantage. In an interview published on Mansion on main Street dot com, Carlos said Deborah had great, bright eyes quote, with such vitality behind them. But Deborah said quote, Carlo kept butting in on the conversation. He had something to say about everything, and yet we ended up flirting

with each other. Oh de She's like, I couldn't resist. But when network reps saw them flirting, they wouldn't let them compete against each other on the same show. I say, were like, let's not get in the way of this budding romance. Carlo's turn came first. He lost his episode, but before he left, he slipped Deborah his phone number. Now, she said she didn't think much about it because she was about to go on. Unfortunately she bombed. But they both lived near l A, so three weeks later she

decided to call him up. They spent their first date at old book and record stores, and it turned out they had a ton of the same interests and tastes. They married in and Carlos said, quote, we hold each other too high standards. God help you. If you tell a joke you've told before, Yike. Yeah, I feel like that's half of marriage. Is like, oh yeah, I feel like you told me that. Joe heard that one. Carlo,

you said it two weeks ago. He's like, damn it. Yeah, Well you weren't listening, right, Yeah, Can you honestly say you're paying attention? Your eyes glazed clearly I was while you didn't laugh. Well, it wasn't funny, Carlo have a hard time now. In the interview, they said they still yell at the TV while they watched Jeopardy together. Another story in Eddie Timinus was the first blind contestant on

Jeopardy when he was only three years old. Eddie had to have an operation to remove tumors from his eyes and that led to permanent blindness. So when he went on Jeopardy, they made some adjustments, like he would get the category names in brail before each round, and he had a Brail keyboard to type out his response for Final Jeopardy, but he refused any other accommodations. Jeopardy is largely an audio game, really, when it comes down to it. I was going to say, I'm not sure you needed

many other accommodation. Yeah, that's cool. He's like, look just a bare minimum, right, And they didn't do any video questions during those games either. Oh yeah, I guess they have a video Yeah, that's right. Apparently he's a whole team that just makes video Jeopardy questions. They go all over the world. What an interesting job, you know, right,

sign me up. Well, Eddie won five games in a row, which at the time and up until two thousand three, was the limit on the number of games you could win. So once you win five, you retire undefeated. I never knew they had a limit, And now now it's like, how long can you hold on? Well, they love these streaks now, right, because everybody tunes in to see when's

the champ gonna lose? Yeah. So, later Eddie ended up in a Yahoo message group about game shows where high school social studies teacher named Kelly asked him for some ideas on integrating game shows into her teaching curriculum, which to me, it sounds like she just wanted to talk to this guy, right, Like, Um, I don't know, how could I put game shows in mind classroom? I mean, she might also be a conscientious teacher trying to mold the minds of tomorrow. But yeah, I mean she's like,

can I ask this undefeated champion of Jeopardy. She did say that her mom had nudged her to get to know him, Okay, after his time on the show Good, So A're just saying she was like seeking him out. She's a wing mom, right, Guys get wing men, Ladies get wing moms. Well, Eddie must have had some good ideas for her, because later he said she quote sent me a note thanking me for helping her fill the last few minutes of her class, and things progressed from there. Now,

they didn't live near each other. She was like in North Carolina. He was in Virginia. But she had a friend who lived near where he did, and she would go visit her and managed to meet up with Eddie while she was there, which again feels to me like, Oh, I'm just in town. What do you know? I happen to be close to you. He's working hard on this, she wrote to an old high school person she hadn't seen in twenty years. It was like, I need to come visit you, okay, And they're like, who is this again?

Remember me? I sat next to you on the bus well, Eddie said, quote it was a lovely walk. I had the sensation that I had just found the one, it would seem, she concurred. When I met her parents, her dad told me they kind of knew me already since they'd watched me on TV so many times. He was like, surprise, bitch, I'm completely different. Another couple is two women who actually did compete against each other. Emily and Stacy Chloyd first met in two thousand nine at an in person audition

for Jeopardy. In an article on Insider by Annetta Constantonitis, Emily said she'd grown up watching the show every night with her parents and joined the quiz Bowl team in high school, and she never really thought she'd compete, but when auditions came to d c Is, she figured, I'll get to shot. And at the audition there was coordinator who held icebreakers to help everyone relax, and they asked

quote who came furthest for the audition? A girl raised her hand, introduced herself as Stacy and said she just graduated from University of Michigan and was moving to d C to work for a nonprofit legal clinic. Emily is like, whoa hey, I actually just graduated from Michigan and moved to d C to work as a climate scientist, and Stacy'd like, whoa crazy. But they didn't see each other again for eight months. They both got called to go

on Jeopardy and they both flew to Los Angeles. And we kind of described this before, but when you show up for the day, you don't know when you're going to compete or against whom. Emily is the one who told us quote. Just before each game, the staff draw the names of two contestants who will go up against the returning champion, which to me, I learning that the returning champion plays all their games in a row. Yes,

that's really intense. So not only have you now I've won two, three, four games, I've got more to film each day, and then I got to come back tomorrow and shoot five in a row like Ken Jennings who won seventy four games. What is that like? Fifteen days straight? Answering trivia do you think it's better like you you're in the zone, right, or like maybe, Oh I wish a couple of months went by, I could read some more books tomorrow, get some rest, right your brains just

like I don't know anymore, my brain is right. It's so weird because we see it day to day. You assume there's twenty four hours in between. Yeah, but now they're like, we're going to take a twenty minute break water and come on back. Well, after three games were filmed that day, they drew Emily's name to compete, and then the next name they pulled, of course, with Stacy's. The two of them reintroduced themselves. It had been eight months. I didn't really remember each other's names, and then they

went head to head. By the end of double Jeopardy. Going into the final round, Emily was in third place with only four The returning champion had a thousand dollars, but Stacy was rocking fifteen thousand dollars. Now, of course, you know that it's anybody's game in Final Jeopardy, but that was a tough score to b because all Stacy had to do was not wager a high enough amount that she could lose, you know, more than the other two could win, because you can't bet more than you have.

I was about to ask unless like the returning champion was like, oh what I bet sixteen grand? They're like, you don't have it right. He's only got a thousand, so the max he could win his two thousands. So as long as Stacy didn't lose more than you know, thirteen thousand dollars, then she was fine. Yeah, so of course she won at that game, locked up tight and Uh and Emily lost. Since they both lived in d C, they decided they would have a viewing party of their

episode together when it aired in March. By that fall, they were finally dating, even though they both went to University of Michigan and both lived in d C. They told Jeopardy that it's really unlikely they would have met if it weren't for the show. Emily told Insider that some of her friends had to apologize for saying mean things about Stacy while they were competing on the show. But that's right or die friends, all right. Stacy was probably like, no, you you got to talk about me.

You should hear what my friends said about you know. They were like that four whatever. The returning champ his friends probably said some terrible things. I know, but he's like, I didn't have to disclose. We had no romance. On their first Valentine's Day together, Jeopardy aired the episode where Ken Jennings competed against the IBM computer Watson, which Emily said, quote was pretty special since it turned out Watson had actually trained on our game, so that's cute. There was

like a Valentine's Day gift to them from Jeopardy. Emily and Stacy married two years later on June tenth, and they said that they think Jeopardy is hugely important because quote, knowledge and expertise and truth are taking a beating these days, but on pretty they're respected and celebrated. Seeing that people could win for being smart or at least good at trivia was important for a kid who preferred reading books

to playing sports. And when they tell their story and people ask them who won, Emily likes to say, quote, Stacy won the game, but I won at life. Now there's a bunch of other couples with similar stories, some of them you know, fascinating, and some of them just like, yeah, we're broth. On Jeopardy we met we started dating, we got married. Right, Oh wow, you really paint out a picture for me. But look, I mean, you put a bunch of nerds in a room together, it's going to

happen sooner or later. Right, I was actually good, I was thinking because earlier I'm like, well, I don't think of Jeopardy as a place to meet somebody, but like every place where you're in a room with people who share at least one interest with you is a possible place to meet people at least to be friends, like you know, you have something in common, well, and learning that they've got Okay, five five games a day, you know, between ten and fifteen people back sitting in the green

room all day. You know, probably a lot of them were sitting there reading a book. But there's going to be some social interaction. Yeah, so yeah, lots of chances. I mean, if only my Ambiolic and Ken Jennings would get together, that that really put a nice button on

this episode. So if y'all could just do that speak romances, No, probably not, because Ken Jennings has been married to his wife since the year two thousand and then I found out that my ambi alics current boyfriend is apparently a writer, poet, filmmaker, and futurist um and I guess apparently the two of them hosts a podcast together. So actually, maybe we can get them on the show, because that could be a ridiculous romance right there. Yeah, that'd be cool. How did

my ambiolic and her futurist boyfriend get together? Did you watch Blossom? You didn't watch? Did you? No? I didn't. I know about the hats, but that's about it. I watched it because I was in love with six. Oh yeah, yeah, because her name was six, and I just thought that was the coolest thing. Like her name is a number. But like if someone's name is four, it doesn't work.

It's like the X sound. I feel it does a lot for six, right, because yeah, I don't, but I'm not thinking of other numbers that work for me as a name. Yeah, seven, it sounds like a serial killer. Seven. I just think. I just think Kevin Spacey, that's no good head in a box. True. Nine not not doing it. I guess I have a Friendame Trey because she's the third. So that's but that's he's not called three, you know. That's trade feels like a cooler way to do it

three on Ozark. Oh yeah, three, that's right, right, And I don't know why it works for me. And I was like, I was like, sure, it looks right, but I didn't find him sexy. No, no, that's true, but I mean he was definitely a child. I'm glad to hear that before the Canadian Broadcasting Company cancels us downs. Wow, well that's yeah. That that's your Jeopardy love stories. The trivia of Jeopardy Love Story. You can you can look

up more. There's a bunch, like you said, these were the most These are the ones that really stood out to me. Yeah, that's your cue and last I could find, you know, not a lot of up to the date information on them, but it seems like they've all lived happily ever after And it was nice to kind of get to dig through Alex and Jean's life too. Yeah.

I never knew that about And I didn't really know much about Alex Trebek at all until, of course he's sick and people were doing a lot of retrospectives about his life and stuff like that. I remember being like, oh, there's you know, he's a really interesting guy, but he just was you know, again, he's like he was famous before people were on Instagram all the time, inviting you into their home and stuff, so you just had basically

just what he was on Jeopardy. For a very long time, you didn't get that kind of insider look at someone's personality the way you do now. I really liked this interview I read with Will Smith a few years back that he said, you know, when I was becoming a movie star, it was all about hiding from your audience. Uh, you know, you won't You couldn't put movies out too often, you couldn't be out there in the press too much because you wanted this air of like, where's he been, Oh,

he's here, let's go see his movie. You know. It was about sort of restricting people's access to you. And he said then there was this turn with social media where now it's more like, if you want to be a movie star, you've got to let people into your home and see what your day to day life, you know, curated though it may be. And now I can't help but think how much better Will Smith might be doing right now if people didn't get to see so much

of what he was doing. Literally, one of the best headlines ever is we should all know less about each other. And I kind of agree. There's parts of it that are great and and very humanizing and so on, but but yeah, it's a lot of it is like, Okay, maybe you should just learn how to not talk about everything in your life and say every word that comes out of your that comes to your head because it's not doing any favors. If we can only all be more like Alex Trebeck. Well, this was really fun to

learn about these Jeopardy folks. I hope that y'all enjoyed this too. Um, one of the finest game shows ever, still going strong. And you think about trivia is they keep making more of it. There's always something. Facts keep happening, just keep coming, as much as I keep saying please stop. Um, but yeah, let us know what you saw it. Reach out with your own suggestions. Tell us if you were

on Jeopardy. I think we asked this last time, and if you on Jeopardy, tell us your experience, especially if you got to meet Alex Trebek, if he told you a joke, or if he cursed at you. I want to hear about it. You can find us through email ridic Romance at gmail. Dot com right, or find us on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Oh great, it's Eli. I'm at Dynamite Boom and the show's at ridic Romance. That's right, and we will be back soon with another

fun filled episode about these some crazy love stories. Right, we'll catch the next one. Love me by so long, friends, it's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show. Tell your friends, name's Uncle's in this? To listen to a show ridiculous roll nance