1. Winston Conrad "Wink" Martindale was an American disc jockey, radio personality, game show host and television producer.
34 Facts About Wink Martindale
1. 2.
Wink Martindale presented Wink's Vault, on his YouTube Channel, from 2014 until his death in 2025.
3.
Winston Conrad Martindale was born on December 4,1933, in Jackson, Tennessee, the fourth of five children.
4.
Wink Martindale's mother, Frances Mae, was a housewife, and his father, James Martindale, was a lumber inspector, and later worked for Life magazine.
5.
Wink Martindale grew up in humble circumstances in a deeply religious household.
6.
Wink Martindale's mother had wanted him to become a minister as she believed he had the perfect voice for it and he was a frequent churchgoer.
7.
Wink Martindale said that a person could only become a minister if he heard a calling, and would later admit to his minister that he wasn't called for the ministry.
8.
Wink Martindale started his career as a disc jockey, when he was 17 at WPLI in Jackson, earning $25 a week.
9.
DJ Dewey Phillips wanted to interview Elvis during his program, so Wink Martindale endeavored to contact Elvis, but Gladys Presley, Elvis's mother, answered the phone and said Elvis was so nervous that he had gone to a movie theater.
10.
In 1967, Wink Martindale acted in a short futuristic documentary film about home life in the year 1999 produced by the Philco-Ford Corporation which predicted, among other things, Internet commerce.
11.
The emcee role for which Wink Martindale is most widely known is on Tic-Tac-Dough.
12.
Coincidentally, Wink Martindale died one day after the revival of Tic-Tac-Dough premiered on Game Show Network, which occurred on April 14,2025.
13.
Two years after that program went off the air, Wink 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.
14.
Four series were commissioned and Wink Martindale served as host for all four.
15.
On June 2,2006, Wink Martindale received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
16.
On October 13,2007, Wink Martindale was one of the first inductees into the American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.
17.
Wink 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.
18.
Wink Martindale appeared in various television commercials, including a stint as a pitchman for the travel website Orbitz.
19.
On June 2,2009, Wink Martindale signed with the syndicated Hit Parade Radio format.
20.
Several times during 2008, Wink Martindale filled in for Fred Roggin on GSN Live while Roggin was on vacation.
21.
Instant Recall was the first show Wink Martindale hosted following Debt aired on Lifetime from 1996 to 1998.
22.
In 2012, Wink Martindale returned to radio, as host of The 100 Greatest Christmas Hits of All Time.
23.
In 2013, Wink 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, sang a song teaching kids their "Jamaican ABCs," and promoted a drinkable mouthwash, called Scoap.
24.
In 2014, Wink 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.
25.
Wink Martindale 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.
26.
Wink Martindale 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.
27.
In October 2016, Wink Martindale appeared on the daytime soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful, as a minister.
28.
On January 28,2021, Wink 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.
29.
On June 6,2021, Wink 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.
30.
Wink Martindale married Madelyn Leech in 1954 and they had four children.
31.
Wink Martindale later married his second wife, Sandy, in 1975.
32.
Wink Martindale had a few dogs named after the various game shows he hosted.
33.
Wink Martindale identified as a born-again Christian and was once a guest on the TBN flagship program Praise the Lord.
34.
Wink Martindale died from lymphoma at a hospital in Rancho Mirage, California, on April 15,2025, at the age of 91.