Speaker 1: For my birthday a couple months ago, Diana got me
Speaker 1: a beautiful set of kitchen knives and class a cooking class,
Speaker 1: like a knife skills class, and I got to go
Speaker 1: take that the other night. Finally, after months, it happened
Speaker 1: and it was really cool. It was great. We did
Speaker 1: a Mediterranean feast, learned a little um. It was a
Speaker 1: very beginner's class, and you know, I've been cooking for
Speaker 1: a while, but there was a couple of new things
Speaker 1: I learned. And it was also really nice to go
Speaker 1: in and have somebody teaching you and sort of be like, oh, good,
Speaker 1: I've I've been doing that right, right, that is a
Speaker 1: nice thing. Yeah, I did. I did hope that it
Speaker 1: would be some like dope chef knife ninja skills, but
Speaker 1: I guess I should have expected more because it's definitely
Speaker 1: for like couples to take. I did, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I couldn't go with you. So you're all alone and
Speaker 1: ten couples looking like a real loser, and they're like,
Speaker 1: I'm professionally ariad. Actually so frequently as often as I
Speaker 1: could said well my wife doesn't she lives in Niagara. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't know her. Yeah, she's beautiful, but she never
Speaker 1: leaves the house. In Canada. It was really good. It
Speaker 1: was really good food. I did learn some seasoning tricks
Speaker 1: and oh and I learned what to do with an
Speaker 1: extra bulb of garlic. You just you just throw it
Speaker 1: in the oven. You just cook it until it's soft,
Speaker 1: and you just squeezed out like a paste and they
Speaker 1: just can put that on some bread or whatever. I'm in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, if you roast garlic, it's kind of sweet,
Speaker 1: like it's not the it doesn't give you the kick
Speaker 1: that garlic does when you cook it dish sick on
Speaker 1: a pan or whatever. Another thing I learned, they said,
Speaker 1: the more you cut garlic, the more spicy and garlicy
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah, And so if you really want to
Speaker 1: get a lot of flavor out of your garlic, chop
Speaker 1: it very fine. And if you just want to keep
Speaker 1: it kind of mild, you know, just slice it a
Speaker 1: few times and then you just baked the whole thing
Speaker 1: like that. You roast those clothes whole and they come
Speaker 1: out almost sweet. Yeah. I couldn't go because I was
Speaker 1: in Orlando. They have their winter Mini Fringe festival in
Speaker 1: in January, so I got to go to that for
Speaker 1: just a couple of days and see a few shows
Speaker 1: and submissions are open. You were there for We drove in,
Speaker 1: we saw two shows and fell asleep. We woke up,
Speaker 1: we saw two shows, and we drove home. That's how
Speaker 1: we roll over here. It's crazy, but it was worth it.
Speaker 1: It was really great to go well, speaking of theater,
Speaker 1: speaking of weddings, speaking of Canadians, all the things we've mentioned,
Speaker 1: all the things we've mentioned. We've got a brand new
Speaker 1: episode today. I didn't think this was going to happen,
Speaker 1: but in doing the research for our last episode, I
Speaker 1: just came up with pages and pages of of of
Speaker 1: other things to talk about around Jeopardy, because you know,
Speaker 1: last week we learned about merv and Julianne Griffin. They
Speaker 1: were the TV power couple who created Jeopardy, which is,
Speaker 1: of course one of the most popular game shows in
Speaker 1: the world. I really thought that was going to be
Speaker 1: all the ridiculous romance that we got out of it,
Speaker 1: because I mean, it's a it's a fast paced quiz
Speaker 1: show where contestants just spit out rapid fire questions. They're
Speaker 1: all trying to out trivia themselves for for big prizes.
Speaker 1: So I didn't think there'd be a lot of romance involved,
Speaker 1: but somehow several people actually had their their buzzers pressed
Speaker 1: by their opponents. Sparks went flying after the final Jeopardy
Speaker 1: answer was questioned in more ways than and we're going
Speaker 1: to get to know some of their stories today, but first, honestly,
Speaker 1: we've just got to hear all about the super sweet
Speaker 1: romance between one of the world's best TV hosts, Alex
Speaker 1: Trebek and his beloved wife Jean. Let's do it, hey
Speaker 1: the French, come listen well, Elien and Diana got some
Speaker 1: chories to tell. There's no match making, a romantic tips.
Speaker 1: It's just about ridiculous relationships. I love. It might be
Speaker 1: any type of person at all and abstract constrom a
Speaker 1: concrete wall. But if there's a story with a second
Speaker 1: glance ridiculous role that a production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: All right, So to me, Alex Trebek is like right
Speaker 1: up there with Mr Rogers, Uh, Dolly Parton, Bob Ross,
Speaker 1: Sherry Lewis, you know, I don't know, Keanu Reeves, you know,
Speaker 1: Brendan Fraser. Just these people that you look at and
Speaker 1: you're like, you're just a kind person and you want
Speaker 1: goodness in this world. Yeah, and like, in doing research
Speaker 1: about him is really interesting to find that he is
Speaker 1: very different from his Jeopardy persona but also a piece
Speaker 1: of ship. No. No, it seems like this is very
Speaker 1: true too. It's an interesting contract. Yeah, and now we're
Speaker 1: gonna close Alex trick for the monster he is. No No.
Speaker 1: Alex Trebeck was born in Already in Ontario, Canada. His
Speaker 1: father was actually born in Ukraine, and his last name
Speaker 1: was originally but we learned in Pam Pollock's book Who
Speaker 1: Was Alex Trebek that his father changed it after he
Speaker 1: moved to Canada, so it was easier for English speakers
Speaker 1: to pronounces oldest time. Alex Trebek's mother was Lucille Say, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: come on, wouldn't it be cool if it was Lucille Ball, Like,
Speaker 1: wouldn't that blow everybody's mind? I don't know, I'd be like.
Speaker 1: Alex Trebek was a Nepo baby. As a child, Alex
Speaker 1: Trebek was very protective of his younger sisters, and one time,
Speaker 1: when he was just seven years old, he saw his
Speaker 1: little five year old sister playing out on a frozen lake,
Speaker 1: very common in the Northeast Canada. Now he ran over.
Speaker 1: He stopped and he said, no, you can't go out there.
Speaker 1: It's dangerous. You shouldn't be planned on a lake unless
Speaker 1: you absolutely know it's completely frozen. So he did that
Speaker 1: thing where he was like, you know, to show you
Speaker 1: how dangerous this is, I'm going to go test the lake.
Speaker 1: And the seven year old Alex Trebek walks out on
Speaker 1: this frozen lake and of course the ice creaked and
Speaker 1: cracked and he fell straight through into the frozen river.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. It was only because a rail worker
Speaker 1: happened to be passing by uh and saw him and
Speaker 1: pulled him out of the water that Alex was saved. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's crazy. There's gotta be a better way, Like can
Speaker 1: you not throw a cement block or something, well, but
Speaker 1: then you would break it week in the integrity, right,
Speaker 1: I guess. So I feel that they should have come
Speaker 1: up with a better way. That's all I'm saying. After
Speaker 1: all this time dealing with frozen lakes, there's gotta be
Speaker 1: just a seven year old didn't know. Okay, fair enough, seven,
Speaker 1: he doesn't know the best way to do everything. Moving on.
Speaker 1: Alex Trebek grew up in a French English bilingual household,
Speaker 1: and he went to both French and English speaking schools,
Speaker 1: and he went to a prep school starting in ninth grade.
Speaker 1: Jealous of that. I wish I grew up in a
Speaker 1: bilingual household, because no chance I'm to learn it now.
Speaker 1: But the same year that he went to prep school,
Speaker 1: Alex's parents divorced, and his mother moved to Detroit, Michigan,
Speaker 1: to be near her sisters, and Alex started acting out.
Speaker 1: You know that's common with children of divorced His grades suffered.
Speaker 1: At the end of the semester, the prep school told
Speaker 1: him not to come back next year, which is pretty
Speaker 1: rude thing for a prep school to say, but I
Speaker 1: guess you gotta keep your grades to a certain level
Speaker 1: of certain standards. So they were like, get out of here, Alex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're preparing you for you know what happens when you
Speaker 1: don't show up and you're not prepared. Um. So his
Speaker 1: dad drove out to the school and begged them to
Speaker 1: let Alex stay. So he did get another chance, but
Speaker 1: from then on he had to be sure to be
Speaker 1: like an exemplary student, and he excelled in all his classes.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of the headmaster who pulls a
Speaker 1: young Alex trebek in and says, you're just so good
Speaker 1: with facts, kid, you just can't learn things. You know,
Speaker 1: we teach you stuff, we ask you questions, and you
Speaker 1: don't have the answers. Alex Trebec, He's like, one day,
Speaker 1: I'll show you. I'll have all the answers. After Alex graduated,
Speaker 1: he joined a military program that would help him pay
Speaker 1: for college, but he only lasted three days. That's three
Speaker 1: days longer than I would last. The first two days
Speaker 1: he was harassed by older students who loved to haze
Speaker 1: the new recruits. But on day three, the final straw
Speaker 1: came when the academy told him he had to cut
Speaker 1: his hair. Trebec wrote in his memoirs, quote I had
Speaker 1: a good head of hair. So he's like, hell no,
Speaker 1: And he called his dad. He said, I'm coming home.
Speaker 1: Alex said his dad was incredibly supportive throughout his life.
Speaker 1: He wrote that his father wasn't a well educated man,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't particularly bright, but quote, he was just
Speaker 1: all heart. He just poured his love out for me.
Speaker 1: It didn't matter what I did. I was never a
Speaker 1: disappointment to him. Alex got his first job as a
Speaker 1: bellhop at the hotel where his dad worked as a chef,
Speaker 1: and he actually had a credible work ethic and he
Speaker 1: was seriously dedicated to punctuality. He's one of those guys
Speaker 1: who was like, if you're not ten minutes early, you're late. Right.
Speaker 1: I can just see him in a little outfit, but
Speaker 1: they have to wear the little bell hop outfit at
Speaker 1: this I'm going to assume because I want to that yes, yes,
Speaker 1: with that little hat. Yes, I love it. I wish
Speaker 1: he had hosted Jeopardy as a bell just one time
Speaker 1: to get in touch with his roots. But look, Alex Trebeck, Mr.
Speaker 1: Punctuality is doing really well in school. But he was
Speaker 1: not all goody two shoes. One of the more surprising
Speaker 1: facts about this guy this this calm, cool, collected Canadian
Speaker 1: that apparently Alex Trebek curses like a sailor. What I
Speaker 1: can't even imagine. Amazing. He sounds so class like, his
Speaker 1: voice is so classy that I feel like if I
Speaker 1: heard him say a curse word, I would just laugh.
Speaker 1: But I don't Maybe you would be really scared. I
Speaker 1: don't know, some ships going down. Your family grew up
Speaker 1: with some cursing, right, Oh yeah, mine didn't like. When
Speaker 1: I was a kid, like, no one in my family curse,
Speaker 1: so it was weird to hear my parents curse when
Speaker 1: I did. I don't know what change because we definitely
Speaker 1: weren't cursing for a long time. And then it was
Speaker 1: like my brother was like feeling himself at whatever age
Speaker 1: boys do, and they're like, I'm must start, you know,
Speaker 1: because we loved action movies, so we would watch the
Speaker 1: lethal weapon, you know, whatever, whatever, so you would just
Speaker 1: say whatever quote, and of course it makes people laugh
Speaker 1: when a kid curses. Oh God, so you keep doing
Speaker 1: it because you want to make people laugh anyway. So
Speaker 1: I think it was more about that. But now now
Speaker 1: we all curse. So I don't know what happened. We
Speaker 1: were a bad influence on our parents or something because
Speaker 1: they used to care, but now they don't care. They're
Speaker 1: over it. Well. Alex Trebek said that, you know, he
Speaker 1: was too good about everything else. He needed something different.
Speaker 1: He didn't smoke or drink or do any drugs or anything,
Speaker 1: so he needed a vice, uh, to make himself stand
Speaker 1: out like one of the guys. He said, quote, I've
Speaker 1: started saying spe words so busy eating buckets could eat
Speaker 1: his Mr. Truck. That's not a real quote. That's just
Speaker 1: what I like to imagine that he sounded like. In reality,
Speaker 1: he did say that he did need this vice, but quote,
Speaker 1: it didn't help me become one of the guys. It
Speaker 1: really just made me look like a jerk. Alright, fair enough,
Speaker 1: it's fair well. He took his work seriously and in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one he was studying at the University of
Speaker 1: Ottawa during the day and working at the Canadian Broadcasting
Speaker 1: Corporation at night. He took every gig to come his
Speaker 1: way and eventually ended up reading this CBC National radio news.
Speaker 1: He definitely had a good radio news for you. In
Speaker 1: sixty six, he hosted his first quiz show, a game
Speaker 1: for high schoolers called Reach for the Top. He hosted
Speaker 1: classical music programs on the radio. He hosted sports games
Speaker 1: like curling, horse racing, and skating, so the classy sports.
Speaker 1: He was not like call on the football games. He
Speaker 1: even did his own morning radio DJ show in the
Speaker 1: early seventies. That's when the cursing came in handy, and
Speaker 1: in v four Alex Trebeck found a woman he would
Speaker 1: soon call his wife. Her name was Elaine Howard of Columbus, Ohio,
Speaker 1: and if you were around in the nineteen sixties, you
Speaker 1: might know her better by her pseudonym Teddy Howard, which
Speaker 1: she used while working as a playboy bunny to trot.
Speaker 1: Elaine and her first husband, Louis Calais moved to Toronto
Speaker 1: and they had a daughter named Nicki. While she was there,
Speaker 1: she started a party planning business and a promo agency.
Speaker 1: Obviously this after she stopped being a playboy bunny, and
Speaker 1: eventually she even got her own talk show with h
Speaker 1: c h TV titled called Calais, where she would really
Speaker 1: push the boundaries by talking about sex topics. And remember
Speaker 1: this is the late sixties, so kind of a big deal.
Speaker 1: They were like sex the one word you can't say
Speaker 1: on television. Right. On that show, she interviewed a woman
Speaker 1: named Xaviera Hollander, who was someone who had gone from
Speaker 1: working as a call girl to eventually becoming New York
Speaker 1: Cities leading madam in the nineteen sixties. Now, Hollander was
Speaker 1: arrested and forced to leave the US, and this is
Speaker 1: where she ended up doing this interview in Canada. So
Speaker 1: future episode alert, we go see if we could dig
Speaker 1: up the story. Yeah, right now, We could not find
Speaker 1: this interview, but apparently it was salacious enough to get
Speaker 1: Elaine's show canceled too far called calais if you've gone
Speaker 1: too fine. Trying to imagine the question she would have
Speaker 1: asked New York Cities leading madam. You know that would
Speaker 1: get her show canceled in the late sixties. So it
Speaker 1: might have been, you know, like, did justs go all
Speaker 1: the way up to your knees? You know, one guy
Speaker 1: tell my foot? No, she might have named names, That's
Speaker 1: what I want to know, unless she might have said
Speaker 1: somebody's name and they were like, we can't tell anybody
Speaker 1: that he was visiting, you know, your brothel or whatever.
Speaker 1: Trudeau's dad, Remember we did the episode about him. Oh no,
Speaker 1: Trudeau Speculation Station Davierra Hollanders spilled the beans about Pierre
Speaker 1: Trudeau and they had to cancel call after or she's
Speaker 1: like the wife Mrs Trudeau came and met Mick Jaggers. Right,
Speaker 1: that's it. They were like, turn it up all the plug.
Speaker 1: Well after that show got canceled, Elaine ended up posting
Speaker 1: a more typical morning show called Canada a m This
Speaker 1: job was also short lived because apparently there was quickly
Speaker 1: a mutual agreement that she was not a good fit
Speaker 1: for a typical morning show. I don't like to get
Speaker 1: up this early really more of a late night kind
Speaker 1: of gal. I mean, I got fired for being too
Speaker 1: outspoken on my sex talk show, so maybe I shouldn't
Speaker 1: be waking people up in the market. That's such a
Speaker 1: good point. You want somebody very chill in the mat.
Speaker 1: But getting and losing this job did lead to her
Speaker 1: meeting Alex Treppek. Now. She and Trebek got married in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four, a year after her divorce from her
Speaker 1: first husband. Unfortunately, there's very little information about their actual marriage,
Speaker 1: except that they did not have any kids together, but
Speaker 1: Alex did adopt Elaine's daughter, Nikki, who was six when
Speaker 1: they got married. Their marriage lasted seven years. They divorced
Speaker 1: amicably in ne and they stayed on good terms. Elaine
Speaker 1: went on to found the company sent Seal, which created
Speaker 1: like a new system for packaging perfume samples. Maybe she's
Speaker 1: the reason you get those magazines like the little flap
Speaker 1: that you could open and smell it. Maybe she came
Speaker 1: up with that because that sounds like a scent steal.
Speaker 1: I know, uh, Speculation station she had been at the
Speaker 1: Flappy thing. She married a TV producer named Peter Carriss
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, and she's mostly stayed out
Speaker 1: of the spotlight. Of course, Alex Trebek did not stay
Speaker 1: out of the spotlight. Decidedly stepped into it. A few
Speaker 1: years after their divorce. He got one of the biggest
Speaker 1: spotlights in the world. We already told y'all about the
Speaker 1: Jeopardy reboot in the last episode and how Lucille Ball
Speaker 1: encouraged merv Griffin to hire Alex Trebeck for the job,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, in he taped his first episode. In
Speaker 1: an interview with Washington Post, Lois Feinstein, a contestant from
Speaker 1: the reboots first episode, said it took two and a
Speaker 1: half hours to film, but Alex quote maintained calm through
Speaker 1: the whole thing. That's wild and for two and a
Speaker 1: half hours for one episode. I don't remember if we
Speaker 1: mentioned this in the last episode, but normally they would
Speaker 1: shoot five episodes of Jeopardy per day, in like an
Speaker 1: eight hour day. They're just back to back boom boom boom.
Speaker 1: What took so long this time? They said, it was
Speaker 1: just a lot of starts and stops, flubs, it was
Speaker 1: his first time they were it was the first time
Speaker 1: bringing the show back, so they just had to get
Speaker 1: back in the groove again. But he didn't get frustrated.
Speaker 1: He was just he was like, all right, let's take
Speaker 1: it again. Let's go again. That's a good trying to
Speaker 1: keep be Alex Trebek in my day to day. You
Speaker 1: really do. I mean especially uh, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: working in television, everything is so high stakes and everything
Speaker 1: is so everything is last minute. There is You're you're
Speaker 1: going to be shocked if you ever walk into a
Speaker 1: TV set and see how unprepared everything is because you
Speaker 1: can't because you don't know what's going to happen until
Speaker 1: it's happening. A lot of the time, like all the
Speaker 1: scripts and planning in the world can't really prepare you. Um.
Speaker 1: So there there is a lot of starting and stopping.
Speaker 1: Um and something like a live game show with a
Speaker 1: studio audience and everything, I can imagine that be you
Speaker 1: could get tripped up in a lot of places you
Speaker 1: wouldn't expect. Another contestant, Jim Topkins McLean competed in nine,
Speaker 1: said that while they were shooting, a kid shouted out
Speaker 1: an answer during the gameplay and at first Trebek was
Speaker 1: kind of irritated about this, but then he looked over.
Speaker 1: He realized that it was a very young boy, only
Speaker 1: like eight or nine years old. So Trebek walked over,
Speaker 1: sat down and just talked to this kid, and Tompkins
Speaker 1: McClean said, quote, the whole audience fell in love with
Speaker 1: Alex Trebek in that moment. He said, quote, I'm a
Speaker 1: school teacher, and now that's how I scold people. I think,
Speaker 1: what would Alex Trebek do? All these contestants talked about
Speaker 1: how Alex was so focused on them and who they
Speaker 1: were and what they did with their time. They all
Speaker 1: just felt so welcomed by him. In the early nineties,
Speaker 1: a lot of these contestants were in an age where
Speaker 1: they still remembered Art Fleming, who everybody loved as a
Speaker 1: Jeopardy host, So Alex had to really work to win
Speaker 1: them over, but he did it with like no problem
Speaker 1: at all. I thought, that's pretty important to like make
Speaker 1: him all feel comfortable, because then they can perform better.
Speaker 1: You know, like if you made him feel really like
Speaker 1: I'm the guy and you know people are watching for me,
Speaker 1: you probably get a worse performance at all. All the contestants.
Speaker 1: It's such like an added layer of like what's important
Speaker 1: about absolute lutely you know. We'll talk about this a
Speaker 1: little later in the episode. But you show up to
Speaker 1: be on Jeopardy and they filmed five episodes a day,
Speaker 1: all the contestants show up at the same time, and
Speaker 1: you don't know when you're going on. They draw names
Speaker 1: to figure out who's next right before they tape, so
Speaker 1: you might get there at eight am and not shoot
Speaker 1: your episode till four and not know you're shooting your
Speaker 1: episode till three. And so you've got that on top
Speaker 1: of a lot of these people have never been on
Speaker 1: camera before, so they've got to go be TV stars
Speaker 1: for twenty two minutes um and remember everything they ever learned,
Speaker 1: so they're probably very stressed out. Meanwhile, someone's like, what's
Speaker 1: your favorite movie? And I'm like, I've never seen a
Speaker 1: movie or my brain is completely can't remember anything right.
Speaker 1: And the next six years, Alex was a celebrity bachelor,
Speaker 1: the kindest, calmst smartest man on camera who was apparently
Speaker 1: the quote most talking and mother love and South in
Speaker 1: Hollywood when he was off camera. Just kidding, that's not
Speaker 1: a real No one ever said that about him, and
Speaker 1: he never said it. We assume, I mean he curses,
Speaker 1: so speculation Station. That's what it sounds like when he
Speaker 1: actually did say that at some point, But it doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like he was very lucky in love. Once in
Speaker 1: a contestant guest that Flamingos only mate once a year,
Speaker 1: and Trabec responded, quote correct, Flamingos and I have a
Speaker 1: great deal in common. I love an intellectual burn on yourself.
Speaker 1: But in Alex Trebek met the woman who he said
Speaker 1: was his soul mate even though she was twenty four
Speaker 1: years younger than him. And we will come back with
Speaker 1: more right after this. Welcome back to the show, everybody. So.
Speaker 1: Jean Curravan was born in nineteen sixty three in Green Lawn,
Speaker 1: New York, to a small, tight knit Catholic family. She
Speaker 1: and her older brother Chris, and her younger sister Audrey
Speaker 1: were incredibly close and this made it really hard for
Speaker 1: her to leave New York for California to go to
Speaker 1: Pepperdine University. But she went, and while she was there,
Speaker 1: tragedy struck the family when her older brother was killed
Speaker 1: in a car accident. She finished college, but she was
Speaker 1: still really grief struck. She didn't know how she would
Speaker 1: move forward, and she had a job doing bookkeeping for
Speaker 1: a man in Malibu. In she kind of wondered, you know,
Speaker 1: do I stay on the West coast or do a
Speaker 1: head back east? But then a friend of her boss
Speaker 1: started coming by regularly, and although he was two decades
Speaker 1: older than her, she thought he was just so charming
Speaker 1: and kind and smart. He'd come by the house for
Speaker 1: lunch and she would join them. Eventually they started playing
Speaker 1: backgammon together. In a blog on guidepost dot com, Jean said, quote,
Speaker 1: I knew he was on some TV show, but he
Speaker 1: never said much about it, and I didn't ask, like,
Speaker 1: who wants to talk about work? I don't want to
Speaker 1: be that guy. Probably everybody asked you about this all
Speaker 1: the time. It's probably some boring sean. Yeah. Right. So
Speaker 1: one day she called her mom back in New York
Speaker 1: and she said, quote, I met this nice guy. His
Speaker 1: name's Alex Trebek. And her mom like me, she said, quote,
Speaker 1: don't you know who he is? She did not clearly,
Speaker 1: not Mom, I said it very casually. Alex eventually did
Speaker 1: officially ask Jean out. He invited her to a first
Speaker 1: date dinner at his house. She said that she was
Speaker 1: so nervous that she was afraid she'd mispronounced her own name. Quote.
Speaker 1: But Alex is really down to earth, much more casual
Speaker 1: than he is on the show. Alex said, you know,
Speaker 1: the age difference definitely was tough at first, he wrote
Speaker 1: in his memoirs quote, but then I thought, the hell
Speaker 1: with it, will make it work. Jean herself said that
Speaker 1: she could tell he was a little wanted to be
Speaker 1: cautious about that age gap, so she didn't try to
Speaker 1: push him about it. That kind of took it one
Speaker 1: day at a time, and his friend Bob Murphy told
Speaker 1: People magazine that although he and all his friends had
Speaker 1: been trying to set Alex up with someone for a
Speaker 1: year's quote, he was looking for a gene and then
Speaker 1: he found her. And Jean had met a man who
Speaker 1: helped her find her way out of her grief and
Speaker 1: realized that, you know, the future could look bright and
Speaker 1: happy again. On her twenty six birthday in nine, Alex
Speaker 1: gave Jean a pair of black velvet pants and a
Speaker 1: matching Ballero jacket. You could not be more stylish in
Speaker 1: right than some black velvet pants and I'm matching Bolero jacket.
Speaker 1: That's all I know. She probably had a nice like
Speaker 1: satin shell top underneath it. Then he said, wait, here's
Speaker 1: a little something else, and he handed her a little
Speaker 1: wicker box with a six team carrots sapphire ring surrounded
Speaker 1: by six carrots of diamonds. This sounds insane, and it's
Speaker 1: also in a wicker box, which ange to me. I
Speaker 1: feel like i'd have my tracations would be like all
Speaker 1: over the place, she told People magazine. Quote. It took
Speaker 1: my breath away. I mean it was a rock, more
Speaker 1: like a boulder, she continued. Quote. Then he popped the question,
Speaker 1: and I went all dumb. I think I said what
Speaker 1: which I love? Because he clearly popped the answer, and
Speaker 1: she questioned what. No, of course she said yes, And
Speaker 1: soon her father, who Alex hadn't met yet, arranged an
Speaker 1: engagement party for them in New York on a boat
Speaker 1: just off the coast of Long Island. Alex was only
Speaker 1: two years younger than her dad, and he wrote quote,
Speaker 1: when Jeannie introduced me to him, he took one look
Speaker 1: at me and said, I guess I won't be calling
Speaker 1: you son. Were the same age, because we're the same age.
Speaker 1: They married on April nine, and when the minister said,
Speaker 1: do you Alex take Jean to be your wife? Alex
Speaker 1: Trebek said, quote, the answer is yes, yes, of course,
Speaker 1: he said. He got a big laughs. His memoir, he writes, quote,
Speaker 1: that's me always going for the joke. Oh yeah, that's
Speaker 1: what I think of Alex Trebek. First things first, he
Speaker 1: goes with a joke. That's one of the things that
Speaker 1: you've learned about in his memoir and from Gene Though,
Speaker 1: is that off camera? That is just a real jokester
Speaker 1: all the time? That's cool. I feel like it's a
Speaker 1: lot of jokes like that though, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: dad jokes, yeah, or like really smart jokes like oh no,
Speaker 1: that No, that was good too. There was a thinker.
Speaker 1: Remember that joke you told two weeks ago. I just
Speaker 1: got it. I laughed so loud last night when I
Speaker 1: finally figured it out. I was I was perusing an atlas,
Speaker 1: and I totally got the joke you told about the
Speaker 1: bearing straight well. Within three weeks of their wedding, they
Speaker 1: learn they were pregnant with their first son, Matthew. They
Speaker 1: said they knew what they were gonna have kids, but
Speaker 1: they weren't expecting that quickly but then in they had
Speaker 1: a daughter named Emily, and their family also stayed very
Speaker 1: tight with his adoptive daughter, Niki. Nikki worked on production
Speaker 1: in Jeopardy and other shows and movies. She was a model,
Speaker 1: she was a musician. She did all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: This does all kind of stuff. She's still around. Nikki
Speaker 1: said that Alex, who she called Dad, took her to
Speaker 1: a wine symposium in Hawaii where she got to sit
Speaker 1: next to Vincent Price. She said, quote needless to say,
Speaker 1: it was unforgettable. And on that trip, Alex told Nikki
Speaker 1: that he was going to propose to Gene. Nikki said, quote,
Speaker 1: I could see how happy he was. Nikki herself is
Speaker 1: only a few years younger than Jeans, so the two
Speaker 1: of them became more like close friends than you know,
Speaker 1: stepmother and daughter. So my wife is almost the same
Speaker 1: age as my daughter, and I am almost the same
Speaker 1: age as my wife's father. Weird generational divide. Their families
Speaker 1: look like anything, okay, And some of the best stuff
Speaker 1: about the Trebeks, as we've been saying, is learning how
Speaker 1: different he is in his personal life from the Alex
Speaker 1: Trebek that we see on camera. People Magazine called him
Speaker 1: quote a man who keeps his house better homes and gardens,
Speaker 1: neat hangs dress shirts on light hangers and sports shirts
Speaker 1: on dark hangers, and keeps his spice rack alphabetically arranged.
Speaker 1: But Jean says that while it's his job to be astute,
Speaker 1: perfect and articulate on the air quote, he certainly doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be that way at home. People think he
Speaker 1: goes to bed in a suit. He doesn't. Maybe his
Speaker 1: birthday suit right. Maybe he's got like Super Mario pajamas,
Speaker 1: real lacky you wouldn't expect. Oh, I love it. It's
Speaker 1: like Alex Trebek and hiss like dinosaur footie pajamas. He's like,
Speaker 1: I like to keep it young. An audience member said
Speaker 1: on Cora that quote. As soon as they said cut,
Speaker 1: Trebek practically turned into Robin Williams. He started telling Joe
Speaker 1: Oaks and did an imitation of Pacino and Scarface. Then
Speaker 1: when the director says they're about to come back from commercial,
Speaker 1: he goes back to being game show host. Alex. Okay,
Speaker 1: what impression of Pacino sniffing up some ship like say
Speaker 1: hello to my little this? What is friend? That's right?
Speaker 1: Others echoed similar sentiments, calling him silly, a goofball, and
Speaker 1: a prankster. He apparently loved it when he was parodied
Speaker 1: by Will Farrell on sn L or Eugene Levy on STTV,
Speaker 1: which I learned I hadn't seen the Eugene Levy one,
Speaker 1: but I learned that very similarly was presented Trebecca, someone
Speaker 1: who was very easily frustrated, got angry and stuff, kind
Speaker 1: of like Will Ferrell did, which, of course is like
Speaker 1: the antithesis. I know, I guess that is a funny joke,
Speaker 1: but that's funny. They both went the same direction. Alex
Speaker 1: Trebek also had a friendly right will read with Wheel
Speaker 1: of Fortune host Patch stage Jack. Several times for April
Speaker 1: Fool's Day, they would surprise everyone by switching shows without
Speaker 1: anyone knowing ahead of time. I have to ask, anyone
Speaker 1: does that include? Like did people show up at Wheel
Speaker 1: of Fortune for work and they're like, what's Alex trac? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What I read is that it was basically nobody knew.
Speaker 1: That's just that's hilarious. Now. Alex and Jean Trebeck never
Speaker 1: really liked the Hollywood life too much. They're both homebodies.
Speaker 1: Alex like to drive a pickup truck and do home repairs.
Speaker 1: She said his garage looked like a you know, like
Speaker 1: a tinkerer's workshop. He was also apparently like toughest nails.
Speaker 1: Not only did he do the Olympic torch run in
Speaker 1: nineties six from Florida to Atlanta, in two thousand four,
Speaker 1: he actually fell asleep behind the wheel of his pickup
Speaker 1: and he flew forty five ft over an embankment and
Speaker 1: crashed into a ditch. Damn. Unfortunately, no one else was hurt,
Speaker 1: and Alex himself was back to shooting Jeopardy only four
Speaker 1: days later. Who which I mean? If I stubbed my toe,
Speaker 1: I'm out of work for a week, you know. In
Speaker 1: two thousand seven, when Alex was sixty seven years old,
Speaker 1: he suffered a minor heart attack. His ex wife, Elaine,
Speaker 1: was the one who rushed into the hospital, and she
Speaker 1: said that she begged him there to retire from Jeopardy,
Speaker 1: but within a month he was back shooting the show again.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and eight teen, he fell and in
Speaker 1: his head on the bathtub and had to have surgery
Speaker 1: to remove blood clots from his brain, and once again
Speaker 1: right back to work. Dang. And then, of course I
Speaker 1: would love to not have to get to this, but
Speaker 1: we do have to get to the sad part. In
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, Trebek was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer.
Speaker 1: He and Jean had been traveling a lot. They were
Speaker 1: in Israel when he started having stomach pains and they
Speaker 1: were visiting New York when his doctors called saying they
Speaker 1: had some concerns, and when they caught the cancer, they
Speaker 1: saw that it had already spread to his stomach. Pancreatic
Speaker 1: cancer is one of the most dangerous because it spreads
Speaker 1: very quickly and has no early detection measures. So Jean said,
Speaker 1: all the feelings of losing her brother rushed back to her.
Speaker 1: She was so worried how Alex would handle it, but
Speaker 1: she wrote that quote right away, he exhibited that same
Speaker 1: strength he always had. His attitude wasn't why me, but
Speaker 1: much more okay, what do we do? He did not
Speaker 1: hide the news from it his audience, she wrote, but
Speaker 1: went public right away, and the outpouring of support and
Speaker 1: love was immediate and overwhelming. Jeane points out that most
Speaker 1: of his fans have known him longer than she has,
Speaker 1: so they, you know, probably felt similarly to her that,
Speaker 1: like somebody really important is very sick right now. They
Speaker 1: celebrated their thirtieth anniversary. Trebek wrote in his memoir quote,
Speaker 1: She's kept me alive if it weren't for Geane. I
Speaker 1: had to put myself out of this a long time
Speaker 1: ago because the treatment, said Ben rough. Sometimes he was
Speaker 1: getting chemo once a week, and this started immediately after
Speaker 1: his diagnosis, and he said that sometimes it was painful,
Speaker 1: made him feel really depressed and wonder if it was
Speaker 1: worth going through. But he wrote, quote, that would have
Speaker 1: been a massive betrayal of my wife and soulmate, Jean,
Speaker 1: who had given her all to help me survive. When
Speaker 1: he wasn't working on the show, they would take walks
Speaker 1: together when he felt up for it. They would watch TV,
Speaker 1: or they would sit on their swing in the backyard. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of spiritual, and so she said, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of just being thankful for the sun
Speaker 1: on your face and things like that. Um and Alex
Speaker 1: did continue doing the show, even though sometimes it was
Speaker 1: hard for him to, you know, concentrate for longer periods
Speaker 1: of time or to stand for the whole five episode tapings.
Speaker 1: They started to kind of cut that back a little bit.
Speaker 1: Gene and Alex would watch Jeopardy together. Jean wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: of course he knows most of the answers, but he
Speaker 1: never tells me. I'd be tough to be like no spoilers.
Speaker 1: He's like, I know all the answers. You find the question.
Speaker 1: And then in two thousand nineteen, a contestant named Drew
Speaker 1: Gauer from Gainesville, Georgia, wagered one thou dollars out of
Speaker 1: his two thousand dollar earnings in Final Jeopardy, and for
Speaker 1: his question, he wrote, what is we love you Alex.
Speaker 1: When Trebek revealed the response, he choked up. He said, quote,
Speaker 1: oh that's very kind, thank you. But he then caught
Speaker 1: his composure and said cost you. You're left with five bucks.
Speaker 1: Jean later said quote you could see him like, oh,
Speaker 1: don't make me cry here. But I love it. I
Speaker 1: think it meant the world to him. That's nice, Alex.
Speaker 1: Trebek continued to host Jeopardy despite his illness. Sam Anderson
Speaker 1: wrote in New York Times quote it was a dignified
Speaker 1: refusal to surrender to doom. He was the squarest possible
Speaker 1: existentialist hero, a man who holds the answer to every
Speaker 1: single trivia question, but not to the great final question
Speaker 1: of death, and yet he keeps showing up anyway, reading
Speaker 1: his clues, giving us every last answer he can. Trebec
Speaker 1: taped his final episode on October, just over a week
Speaker 1: before his death on November eight, at eighty years old.
Speaker 1: He had written in his memoir that quote, I've got
Speaker 1: a framed image. Jeannie gave it to me. It's a
Speaker 1: line from our favorite movie, Wuthering Heights. Whatever our souls
Speaker 1: are made of, yours and mine are the same. That's
Speaker 1: the way I look at our relationship. We are one
Speaker 1: soul in two bodies. On auguste Jean, their two children,
Speaker 1: Matthew and Emily, and his adopted daughter Nikki, attended the
Speaker 1: dedication of the Alex Trebek stage at Sony Pictures Soundstage
Speaker 1: Studio ten, where Jeopardy is filmed. So they named the
Speaker 1: stage for him. That's nice. And you know, he said,
Speaker 1: he said, one thing they'll never say of me is
Speaker 1: that I was taken too soon. He said, I did
Speaker 1: so much, you know, I guess that's true. Eight is
Speaker 1: a good run, yeah, and and and a very full year,
Speaker 1: you know. But it's still sad. I mean, especially someone
Speaker 1: like that, you have to think was in people's living rooms,
Speaker 1: like every night that long, you know, you get you
Speaker 1: get attached. I didn't. I'm not a religious Jeopardy watcher myself,
Speaker 1: but I could see a lot of people being like
Speaker 1: really affected by that. We watched a lot when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. Um, not every night, but we watched
Speaker 1: a lot. And you know, even not having watched for
Speaker 1: you know, more of my adult life, he's still such
Speaker 1: an icon. It just he really does feel like someone,
Speaker 1: you know, because his presence, his image is just so
Speaker 1: ubiquitous and present all the time. Yeah, I mean he
Speaker 1: hosted Jeopardy my entire life, so he was like, I mean,
Speaker 1: everyone knew him, Like he's just such an I yeah,
Speaker 1: like you say, a pop culture icon. Everyone knows his name,
Speaker 1: they know what he sounds like. Even if you don't
Speaker 1: watch the show. He was just such a big part
Speaker 1: of the culture that, uh, I don't know, even not
Speaker 1: watching it, I was like, well, they can't get anyone
Speaker 1: else to host the show. Was like, I don't trust
Speaker 1: none of y'all. We mentioned in the last episode. It
Speaker 1: is different. I mean you know that they're they're both
Speaker 1: doing a fine job, but you can't help. But you know,
Speaker 1: you don't want to compare but you can't help but
Speaker 1: be thinking about Trebek all the time, right, which makes
Speaker 1: me think when he took over for Art Fleming, he
Speaker 1: must have had a similar Like even though Art was
Speaker 1: post for way less time, obviously he must add a
Speaker 1: similar Like. Everybody's got this guy his voice, you know,
Speaker 1: in their head for this format and I have to
Speaker 1: really like make it my own. But he had it
Speaker 1: for thirty you know, thirty years or whatever. Like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like we were listening to the weird Al Jeopardy song,
Speaker 1: which I loved growing up. Um Risk Dempsey on our
Speaker 1: Instagram post pointed out that's weird Al was gave the
Speaker 1: Jeopardy that bump. That weird album song references Art Fleming.
Speaker 1: It was it was the early eighties, so it was
Speaker 1: pre Trebek came out. Um but I never saw Fleming myself,
Speaker 1: but people did love him. But we all Alex Trebec
Speaker 1: and uh, we're gonna just clean up all the onions
Speaker 1: that someone's been cutting in here. I've got to get
Speaker 1: this lotion sun sunscreen out of my eye. Um, but
Speaker 1: we're gonna have some fun when we come back. The
Speaker 1: Tripecs and the Griffins are certainly not the only love
Speaker 1: story around Jeopardy. Several couples have met on or around
Speaker 1: the show. We're gonna take a quick look at a
Speaker 1: few of them right after this break. Welcome back everyone. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Jeopardy ain't all answers and questions. It's also a
Speaker 1: total trivia tunnel of love. That's not what I would
Speaker 1: have been at all. You can't think of Jeopardy without
Speaker 1: thinking of getting it off all hot and bothered. Well,
Speaker 1: a blog from Jeopardy website in ten says that at
Speaker 1: least seven couples have formed romantic connections on Jeopardy, and
Speaker 1: then we found at least two more since then. The
Speaker 1: earliest that we could find was actually from the Art
Speaker 1: Fleming Days in seventy eight. A man named Carlo Pan
Speaker 1: was selected to be a contestant on Jeopardy. Like we said,
Speaker 1: they filmed several episodes per day, So everybody shows up
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the day and you kind of
Speaker 1: figure out when you're gonna go on while you're just
Speaker 1: sitting in a green room. So he shows up and
Speaker 1: a bunch of contestants are already packed into that green room, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, chatting with each other, telling their stories of
Speaker 1: how they came to be on the show, and in
Speaker 1: the middle of the room there was a woman named
Speaker 1: Deborah telling her story. She said that she absolutely killed it.
Speaker 1: In her test run to get on the show. She
Speaker 1: was telling everyone that one of her clues had been
Speaker 1: this is the longest song title of as Cap record. Uh, anybody,
Speaker 1: I'll give you a second. Anybody know the answer to
Speaker 1: the the question to that one? Uh? Is there a
Speaker 1: song version of don't be a Medicine South Central I'll
Speaker 1: drinking your juice in the hood? Or well, at least
Speaker 1: as of it was, how could you believe me when
Speaker 1: I said I loved you when you know I've been
Speaker 1: a liar all my life? That is uh, fred as
Speaker 1: Stairs from the movie Royal Wedding, Oh so little victim blaming. Well,
Speaker 1: you know I was a liar, so you know it's
Speaker 1: your fault. It's your fault. Well, Deborah was telling everyone
Speaker 1: in the room how they said she was only the
Speaker 1: second person in the show's history to answer that question
Speaker 1: correctly and then quote, this tall, skinny man with curly
Speaker 1: hair and a terrible brown suit put his hand out
Speaker 1: for me to shake and said, I was the first Games.
Speaker 1: It was Carlo Game Carlo was like, this is the
Speaker 1: one chance, the best set up I've ever had. There's
Speaker 1: not it's not gonna come around again. Even if it
Speaker 1: wasn't interested in Debra. He's like, let me allow me.
Speaker 1: You don't get a layup better than this. Every real
Speaker 1: this is basically scripted, Like I need to, I have
Speaker 1: to take advantage. In an interview published on Mansion on
Speaker 1: main Street dot com, Carlos said Deborah had great, bright
Speaker 1: eyes quote, with such vitality behind them. But Deborah said quote,
Speaker 1: Carlo kept butting in on the conversation. He had something
Speaker 1: to say about everything, and yet we ended up flirting
Speaker 1: with each other. Oh de She's like, I couldn't resist.
Speaker 1: But when network reps saw them flirting, they wouldn't let
Speaker 1: them compete against each other on the same show. I say,
Speaker 1: were like, let's not get in the way of this
Speaker 1: budding romance. Carlo's turn came first. He lost his episode,
Speaker 1: but before he left, he slipped Deborah his phone number. Now,
Speaker 1: she said she didn't think much about it because she
Speaker 1: was about to go on. Unfortunately she bombed. But they
Speaker 1: both lived near l A, so three weeks later she
Speaker 1: decided to call him up. They spent their first date
Speaker 1: at old book and record stores, and it turned out
Speaker 1: they had a ton of the same interests and tastes.
Speaker 1: They married in and Carlos said, quote, we hold each
Speaker 1: other too high standards. God help you. If you tell
Speaker 1: a joke you've told before, Yike. Yeah, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's half of marriage. Is like, oh yeah, I feel
Speaker 1: like you told me that. Joe heard that one. Carlo,
Speaker 1: you said it two weeks ago. He's like, damn it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Well you weren't listening, right, Yeah, Can you honestly say
Speaker 1: you're paying attention? Your eyes glazed clearly I was while
Speaker 1: you didn't laugh. Well, it wasn't funny, Carlo have a
Speaker 1: hard time now. In the interview, they said they still
Speaker 1: yell at the TV while they watched Jeopardy together. Another
Speaker 1: story in Eddie Timinus was the first blind contestant on
Speaker 1: Jeopardy when he was only three years old. Eddie had
Speaker 1: to have an operation to remove tumors from his eyes
Speaker 1: and that led to permanent blindness. So when he went
Speaker 1: on Jeopardy, they made some adjustments, like he would get
Speaker 1: the category names in brail before each round, and he
Speaker 1: had a Brail keyboard to type out his response for
Speaker 1: Final Jeopardy, but he refused any other accommodations. Jeopardy is
Speaker 1: largely an audio game, really, when it comes down to it.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, I'm not sure you needed
Speaker 1: many other accommodation. Yeah, that's cool. He's like, look just
Speaker 1: a bare minimum, right, And they didn't do any video
Speaker 1: questions during those games either. Oh yeah, I guess they
Speaker 1: have a video Yeah, that's right. Apparently he's a whole
Speaker 1: team that just makes video Jeopardy questions. They go all
Speaker 1: over the world. What an interesting job, you know, right,
Speaker 1: sign me up. Well, Eddie won five games in a row,
Speaker 1: which at the time and up until two thousand three,
Speaker 1: was the limit on the number of games you could win.
Speaker 1: So once you win five, you retire undefeated. I never
Speaker 1: knew they had a limit, And now now it's like,
Speaker 1: how long can you hold on? Well, they love these
Speaker 1: streaks now, right, because everybody tunes in to see when's
Speaker 1: the champ gonna lose? Yeah. So, later Eddie ended up
Speaker 1: in a Yahoo message group about game shows where high
Speaker 1: school social studies teacher named Kelly asked him for some
Speaker 1: ideas on integrating game shows into her teaching curriculum, which
Speaker 1: to me, it sounds like she just wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to this guy, right, Like, Um, I don't know, how
Speaker 1: could I put game shows in mind classroom? I mean,
Speaker 1: she might also be a conscientious teacher trying to mold
Speaker 1: the minds of tomorrow. But yeah, I mean she's like,
Speaker 1: can I ask this undefeated champion of Jeopardy. She did
Speaker 1: say that her mom had nudged her to get to
Speaker 1: know him, Okay, after his time on the show Good,
Speaker 1: So A're just saying she was like seeking him out.
Speaker 1: She's a wing mom, right, Guys get wing men, Ladies
Speaker 1: get wing moms. Well, Eddie must have had some good
Speaker 1: ideas for her, because later he said she quote sent
Speaker 1: me a note thanking me for helping her fill the
Speaker 1: last few minutes of her class, and things progressed from there. Now,
Speaker 1: they didn't live near each other. She was like in
Speaker 1: North Carolina. He was in Virginia. But she had a
Speaker 1: friend who lived near where he did, and she would
Speaker 1: go visit her and managed to meet up with Eddie
Speaker 1: while she was there, which again feels to me like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm just in town. What do you know? I happen
Speaker 1: to be close to you. He's working hard on this,
Speaker 1: she wrote to an old high school person she hadn't
Speaker 1: seen in twenty years. It was like, I need to
Speaker 1: come visit you, okay, And they're like, who is this again?
Speaker 1: Remember me? I sat next to you on the bus well,
Speaker 1: Eddie said, quote it was a lovely walk. I had
Speaker 1: the sensation that I had just found the one, it
Speaker 1: would seem, she concurred. When I met her parents, her
Speaker 1: dad told me they kind of knew me already since
Speaker 1: they'd watched me on TV so many times. He was like, surprise, bitch,
Speaker 1: I'm completely different. Another couple is two women who actually
Speaker 1: did compete against each other. Emily and Stacy Chloyd first
Speaker 1: met in two thousand nine at an in person audition
Speaker 1: for Jeopardy. In an article on Insider by Annetta Constantonitis,
Speaker 1: Emily said she'd grown up watching the show every night
Speaker 1: with her parents and joined the quiz Bowl team in
Speaker 1: high school, and she never really thought she'd compete, but
Speaker 1: when auditions came to d c Is, she figured, I'll
Speaker 1: get to shot. And at the audition there was coordinator
Speaker 1: who held icebreakers to help everyone relax, and they asked
Speaker 1: quote who came furthest for the audition? A girl raised
Speaker 1: her hand, introduced herself as Stacy and said she just
Speaker 1: graduated from University of Michigan and was moving to d
Speaker 1: C to work for a nonprofit legal clinic. Emily is like,
Speaker 1: whoa hey, I actually just graduated from Michigan and moved
Speaker 1: to d C to work as a climate scientist, and
Speaker 1: Stacy'd like, whoa crazy. But they didn't see each other
Speaker 1: again for eight months. They both got called to go
Speaker 1: on Jeopardy and they both flew to Los Angeles. And
Speaker 1: we kind of described this before, but when you show
Speaker 1: up for the day, you don't know when you're going
Speaker 1: to compete or against whom. Emily is the one who
Speaker 1: told us quote. Just before each game, the staff draw
Speaker 1: the names of two contestants who will go up against
Speaker 1: the returning champion, which to me, I learning that the
Speaker 1: returning champion plays all their games in a row. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's really intense. So not only have you now I've
Speaker 1: won two, three, four games, I've got more to film
Speaker 1: each day, and then I got to come back tomorrow
Speaker 1: and shoot five in a row like Ken Jennings who
Speaker 1: won seventy four games. What is that like? Fifteen days straight?
Speaker 1: Answering trivia do you think it's better like you you're
Speaker 1: in the zone, right, or like maybe, Oh I wish
Speaker 1: a couple of months went by, I could read some
Speaker 1: more books tomorrow, get some rest, right your brains just
Speaker 1: like I don't know anymore, my brain is right. It's
Speaker 1: so weird because we see it day to day. You
Speaker 1: assume there's twenty four hours in between. Yeah, but now
Speaker 1: they're like, we're going to take a twenty minute break
Speaker 1: water and come on back. Well, after three games were
Speaker 1: filmed that day, they drew Emily's name to compete, and
Speaker 1: then the next name they pulled, of course, with Stacy's.
Speaker 1: The two of them reintroduced themselves. It had been eight months.
Speaker 1: I didn't really remember each other's names, and then they
Speaker 1: went head to head. By the end of double Jeopardy.
Speaker 1: Going into the final round, Emily was in third place
Speaker 1: with only four The returning champion had a thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: but Stacy was rocking fifteen thousand dollars. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: you know that it's anybody's game in Final Jeopardy, but
Speaker 1: that was a tough score to b because all Stacy
Speaker 1: had to do was not wager a high enough amount
Speaker 1: that she could lose, you know, more than the other
Speaker 1: two could win, because you can't bet more than you have.
Speaker 1: I was about to ask unless like the returning champion
Speaker 1: was like, oh what I bet sixteen grand? They're like,
Speaker 1: you don't have it right. He's only got a thousand,
Speaker 1: so the max he could win his two thousands. So
Speaker 1: as long as Stacy didn't lose more than you know,
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand dollars, then she was fine. Yeah, so of
Speaker 1: course she won at that game, locked up tight and
Speaker 1: Uh and Emily lost. Since they both lived in d C,
Speaker 1: they decided they would have a viewing party of their
Speaker 1: episode together when it aired in March. By that fall,
Speaker 1: they were finally dating, even though they both went to
Speaker 1: University of Michigan and both lived in d C. They
Speaker 1: told Jeopardy that it's really unlikely they would have met
Speaker 1: if it weren't for the show. Emily told Insider that
Speaker 1: some of her friends had to apologize for saying mean
Speaker 1: things about Stacy while they were competing on the show.
Speaker 1: But that's right or die friends, all right. Stacy was
Speaker 1: probably like, no, you you got to talk about me.
Speaker 1: You should hear what my friends said about you know.
Speaker 1: They were like that four whatever. The returning champ his
Speaker 1: friends probably said some terrible things. I know, but he's like,
Speaker 1: I didn't have to disclose. We had no romance. On
Speaker 1: their first Valentine's Day together, Jeopardy aired the episode where
Speaker 1: Ken Jennings competed against the IBM computer Watson, which Emily said,
Speaker 1: quote was pretty special since it turned out Watson had
Speaker 1: actually trained on our game, so that's cute. There was
Speaker 1: like a Valentine's Day gift to them from Jeopardy. Emily
Speaker 1: and Stacy married two years later on June tenth, and
Speaker 1: they said that they think Jeopardy is hugely important because quote,
Speaker 1: knowledge and expertise and truth are taking a beating these days,
Speaker 1: but on pretty they're respected and celebrated. Seeing that people
Speaker 1: could win for being smart or at least good at
Speaker 1: trivia was important for a kid who preferred reading books
Speaker 1: to playing sports. And when they tell their story and
Speaker 1: people ask them who won, Emily likes to say, quote,
Speaker 1: Stacy won the game, but I won at life. Now
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of other couples with similar stories, some
Speaker 1: of them you know, fascinating, and some of them just like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're broth. On Jeopardy we met we started dating, we
Speaker 1: got married. Right, Oh wow, you really paint out a
Speaker 1: picture for me. But look, I mean, you put a
Speaker 1: bunch of nerds in a room together, it's going to
Speaker 1: happen sooner or later. Right, I was actually good, I
Speaker 1: was thinking because earlier I'm like, well, I don't think
Speaker 1: of Jeopardy as a place to meet somebody, but like
Speaker 1: every place where you're in a room with people who
Speaker 1: share at least one interest with you is a possible
Speaker 1: place to meet people at least to be friends, like
Speaker 1: you know, you have something in common, well, and learning
Speaker 1: that they've got Okay, five five games a day, you know,
Speaker 1: between ten and fifteen people back sitting in the green
Speaker 1: room all day. You know, probably a lot of them
Speaker 1: were sitting there reading a book. But there's going to
Speaker 1: be some social interaction. Yeah, so yeah, lots of chances.
Speaker 1: I mean, if only my Ambiolic and Ken Jennings would
Speaker 1: get together, that that really put a nice button on
Speaker 1: this episode. So if y'all could just do that speak romances, No,
Speaker 1: probably not, because Ken Jennings has been married to his
Speaker 1: wife since the year two thousand and then I found
Speaker 1: out that my ambi alics current boyfriend is apparently a writer, poet, filmmaker,
Speaker 1: and futurist um and I guess apparently the two of
Speaker 1: them hosts a podcast together. So actually, maybe we can
Speaker 1: get them on the show, because that could be a
Speaker 1: ridiculous romance right there. Yeah, that'd be cool. How did
Speaker 1: my ambiolic and her futurist boyfriend get together? Did you
Speaker 1: watch Blossom? You didn't watch? Did you? No? I didn't.
Speaker 1: I know about the hats, but that's about it. I
Speaker 1: watched it because I was in love with six. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because her name was six, and I just thought that
Speaker 1: was the coolest thing. Like her name is a number.
Speaker 1: But like if someone's name is four, it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It's like the X sound. I feel it does a
Speaker 1: lot for six, right, because yeah, I don't, but I'm
Speaker 1: not thinking of other numbers that work for me as
Speaker 1: a name. Yeah, seven, it sounds like a serial killer. Seven.
Speaker 1: I just think. I just think Kevin Spacey, that's no
Speaker 1: good head in a box. True. Nine not not doing it.
Speaker 1: I guess I have a Friendame Trey because she's the third.
Speaker 1: So that's but that's he's not called three, you know.
Speaker 1: That's trade feels like a cooler way to do it
Speaker 1: three on Ozark. Oh yeah, three, that's right, right, And
Speaker 1: I don't know why it works for me. And I
Speaker 1: was like, I was like, sure, it looks right, but
Speaker 1: I didn't find him sexy. No, no, that's true, but
Speaker 1: I mean he was definitely a child. I'm glad to
Speaker 1: hear that before the Canadian Broadcasting Company cancels us downs. Wow,
Speaker 1: well that's yeah. That that's your Jeopardy love stories. The
Speaker 1: trivia of Jeopardy Love Story. You can you can look
Speaker 1: up more. There's a bunch, like you said, these were
Speaker 1: the most These are the ones that really stood out
Speaker 1: to me. Yeah, that's your cue and last I could find,
Speaker 1: you know, not a lot of up to the date
Speaker 1: information on them, but it seems like they've all lived
Speaker 1: happily ever after And it was nice to kind of
Speaker 1: get to dig through Alex and Jean's life too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I never knew that about And I didn't really know
Speaker 1: much about Alex Trebek at all until, of course he's
Speaker 1: sick and people were doing a lot of retrospectives about
Speaker 1: his life and stuff like that. I remember being like, oh,
Speaker 1: there's you know, he's a really interesting guy, but he
Speaker 1: just was you know, again, he's like he was famous
Speaker 1: before people were on Instagram all the time, inviting you
Speaker 1: into their home and stuff, so you just had basically
Speaker 1: just what he was on Jeopardy. For a very long time,
Speaker 1: you didn't get that kind of insider look at someone's
Speaker 1: personality the way you do now. I really liked this
Speaker 1: interview I read with Will Smith a few years back
Speaker 1: that he said, you know, when I was becoming a
Speaker 1: movie star, it was all about hiding from your audience. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you won't You couldn't put movies out too often,
Speaker 1: you couldn't be out there in the press too much
Speaker 1: because you wanted this air of like, where's he been, Oh,
Speaker 1: he's here, let's go see his movie. You know. It
Speaker 1: was about sort of restricting people's access to you. And
Speaker 1: he said then there was this turn with social media
Speaker 1: where now it's more like, if you want to be
Speaker 1: a movie star, you've got to let people into your
Speaker 1: home and see what your day to day life, you know,
Speaker 1: curated though it may be. And now I can't help
Speaker 1: but think how much better Will Smith might be doing
Speaker 1: right now if people didn't get to see so much
Speaker 1: of what he was doing. Literally, one of the best
Speaker 1: headlines ever is we should all know less about each other.
Speaker 1: And I kind of agree. There's parts of it that
Speaker 1: are great and and very humanizing and so on, but
Speaker 1: but yeah, it's a lot of it is like, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe you should just learn how to not talk about
Speaker 1: everything in your life and say every word that comes
Speaker 1: out of your that comes to your head because it's
Speaker 1: not doing any favors. If we can only all be
Speaker 1: more like Alex Trebeck. Well, this was really fun to
Speaker 1: learn about these Jeopardy folks. I hope that y'all enjoyed
Speaker 1: this too. Um, one of the finest game shows ever,
Speaker 1: still going strong. And you think about trivia is they
Speaker 1: keep making more of it. There's always something. Facts keep happening,
Speaker 1: just keep coming, as much as I keep saying please stop. Um,
Speaker 1: but yeah, let us know what you saw it. Reach
Speaker 1: out with your own suggestions. Tell us if you were
Speaker 1: on Jeopardy. I think we asked this last time, and
Speaker 1: if you on Jeopardy, tell us your experience, especially if
Speaker 1: you got to meet Alex Trebek, if he told you
Speaker 1: a joke, or if he cursed at you. I want
Speaker 1: to hear about it. You can find us through email
Speaker 1: ridic Romance at gmail. Dot com right, or find us
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Oh great, it's Eli.
Speaker 1: I'm at Dynamite Boom and the show's at ridic Romance.
Speaker 1: That's right, and we will be back soon with another
Speaker 1: fun filled episode about these some crazy love stories. Right,
Speaker 1: we'll catch the next one. Love me by so long, friends,
Speaker 1: it's time to go. Thanks so listening to our show.
Speaker 1: Tell your friends, name's Uncle's in this? To listen to
Speaker 1: a show ridiculous roll nance