Radio Martindale started his career as a disc jockey, when he was 17 at WPLI in Jackson, earning $25 a week. After moving to
WTJS, he was hired away for double the salary by Jackson's only other station,
WDXI. Next, he hosted mornings at
WHBQ in
Memphis while a college student at
Memphis State University, before graduating with a bachelor of science degree in 1957. While at Memphis State, Martindale was a member of
Kappa Sigma fraternity. Martindale's rendition of the spoken-word song "
Deck of Cards" went to No. 7 on the
Billboard Hot 100 chart and sold over a million copies in 1959. In
Canada it reached No. 3. It also peaked at No. 5 in the
UK Singles Chart in April 1963, one of four visits to that
chart. where his friend
Elvis Presley made an appearance on June 16, 1956. Following Presley's death in 1977, Martindale aired a nationwide tribute radio special in his honor. Martindale said in 2000, in his memoir,
Winking at Life: "From the day it hit the air,
Gambit spelled winner, and it taught me a basic tenant [sic] of any truly successful game show: Kiss! Keep It Simple Stupid," he added: "Like playing Old Maids as a kid, everybody knows how to play 21, i.e. blackjack." The emcee role for which Martindale is most widely known is on
Tic-Tac-Dough. He was tapped by
Barry & Enright Productions to host the revived series in 1978 and stayed until 1985, presiding over one of the more popular game shows of the day. Coincidentally, Martindale died one day after the revival of
Tic-Tac-Dough premiered on
Game Show Network, which occurred on April 14, 2025. While hosting
Tic-Tac-Dough, Martindale (along with fellow game show hosts
Art James,
Jack Clark, and
Jim Perry) made a
cameo appearance in the 1980 TV movie
The Great American Traffic Jam in a scene where the quartet played golf. During that time, Martindale decided to branch out and form his own production company, Wink Martindale Enterprises, so he could develop and produce his own game shows. His first venture was
Headline Chasers, a co-production with
Merv Griffin that premiered in 1985; Martindale had left
Tic-Tac-Dough to host his creation, but the show did not meet with any success and was cancelled after its only season in 1986. Martindale's next venture was more successful, as he created and, along with Barry & Enright, co-produced the Canadian game show
Bumper Stumpers for
Global Television Network and
USA Network. This series aired on both American and Canadian television from 1987 until 1990. In 1986, he launched a partnership with producer Jerry Gilden, Martindale/Gilden Productions, and it started off with a game show development contract with
CBS. In 1988, Martindale/Gilden Productions secured the licensing rights from
Parker Brothers to develop game shows based on Parker-owned properties such as
Boggle. After hosting two short-lived
Merrill Heatter-produced game shows (a revival of
High Rollers and the Canadian
The Last Word), Martindale went back into producing and launched
The Great Getaway Game on
Travel Channel in 1990. Two years after that program went off the air, Martindale teamed up with Bill Hillier and
The Family Channel to produce a series of "interactive" game shows that put an emphasis on home viewers being able to play along from home and win prizes. Four series were commissioned and Martindale served as host for all four. The first to premiere, on June 7, 1993, was
Trivial Pursuit, an adaptation of the popular trivia-based board game. When his show won a
CableACE Award, Martindale said, the following year, in 1997: "What a concept," He also added: "We help the contestants pay for the goodies they've already gone out and bought." Despite its popularity on cable,
Debt was cancelled in 1998, for the reason more males were watching the show than females (the network's target audience). In a 2018 interview, Martindale said about
Debt being sued by the creator of
Jeopardy!, despite being the success of the show, on cable television, at the end of the first year, before the second show was different than the one, before it: "That first season of
Debt was terrific. The colors on the set matched the colors on a Visa card and after that first season, Visa made us change the colors. We also received a complaint from Merv Griffin Productions that some of our questions and answers were too much like those on
Jeopardy! They sued us and won. We had to change the way the game was played — it never was the same, and the ratings showed it. So after two seasons, unfortunately,
Debt went by the wayside. But it was a terrific show." Martindale did not host another game show for over a decade.
Film •
Year 1999 A.D. (1967) - as Mike
Later career viewing party in March 2010 On June 2, 2006, Martindale received a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2007, he became a member of the nominating committee of the Hit Parade Hall of Fame. On October 13, 2007, Martindale was one of the first inductees into the
American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in
Las Vegas. Martindale was one of the hosts featured in the 2002 NBC special
Most Outrageous Game Show Moments, alongside
Bob Eubanks,
Jim Lange,
Ben Stein, and
Peter Marshall, but was not featured in any of the subsequent episodes ordered by the network. Martindale appeared in various television commercials, including a stint as a pitchman for the travel website
Orbitz. Until 2007, he had a daily three-hour show on the syndicated
Music of Your Life format, which is heard on around 200 radio stations. On June 2, 2009, Martindale signed with the syndicated Hit Parade Radio format. The format began operation on February 7, 2010, with Martindale as afternoon drive personality. The syndicator stopped operating on June 6, 2010. In 2008, he appeared on
GSN Live, an interstitial program during the afternoon block of classic game show reruns. Several times during 2008, Martindale filled in for
Fred Roggin on
GSN Live while Roggin was on vacation. Martindale's last program was the
GSN original series
Instant Recall, which premiered on March 4, 2010. In 2012, Martindale returned to radio, as host of
The 100 Greatest Christmas Hits of All Time. The nationally syndicated show is produced by Envision Radio Networks. In 2013, Martindale made a guest appearance on
The Eric Andre Show; in an appearance typical for the show, he did the interview dressed in a motion-capture suit (at one point being, rather poorly, mocapped dancing), sang a song teaching kids their "Jamaican ABCs," and promoted a drinkable mouthwash, called Scoap (pronounced "sco-app"). In 2014, Martindale began a
YouTube channel, featuring episodes of game shows, game show pilots, rare clips from various game shows, and other game show related content. He continued to maintain the channel, named "Wink's Vault", with episode B-128 of Martindale-hosted game show
Debt being published less than two hours before his death; Martindale's assistants have continued operating the channel under the name "The Game Show Vault." He made a special guest appearance on the December 2, 2014, episode of the
GSN show
The Chase hosted by
Brooke Burns and featuring
Mark Labbett. In October 2016, Martindale appeared on the daytime soap opera
The Bold and the Beautiful, as a minister. On April 21, 2017, Martindale appeared in a
KFC advertising campaign featuring
Rob Lowe as
astronaut Colonel Sanders making a
JFK speech spoof and giving an
homage; the ad is about launching a Zinger chicken sandwich into space. On April 4, 2018, Martindale was the "surprise co-host" (via phone) for
Sirius XM NHL Network Radio's "Three Questions" segment, where a celebrity co-host creates the questions and then quizzes the show's broadcast crew. On January 28, 2021, Martindale claimed on his
Facebook page that he had one of the pilots for the
ABC version of
Deal or No Deal and would upload it when his YouTube channel hit 18,000 subscribers. When he hit his goal on July 19, 2021, the pilot was uploaded to his channel. On June 6, 2021, Martindale began hosting the nationally and internationally syndicated ''The History of Rock 'n' Roll
, a two-hour weekend look back at music from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The production is created by a team composed of Martindale, producer/engineer Peter Jay Gould of The Intervale Group, and writer/producer Gary Theroux, who wrote and produced the 1978 52-hour marathon version of The History of Rock 'n' Roll'' for
Drake-Chenault. The new richly produced series combines songs,
fun facts about the music and the artists, and artist interview soundbites. == Personal life ==