Wink Martindale, a radio personality who became a television star as a dapper and affable host of game shows including “Gambit” and “Tic-Tac-Dough” in the 1970s and ’80s and “Debt” in the ’90s, died Tuesday in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 91.
Nashville Publicity Group, which represented him, announced his death in a statement.
A veteran of the game show circuit, Martindale was involved in more than 20 shows, either as a producer or host.
His first game show, in 1964, was “What’s This Song,” in which contestants paired with celebrities to identify tunes for cash prizes. The show was short-lived, as were many others he experimented with.
“Gambit” was based on the card game blackjack, and “Tic-Tac-Dough” combined trivia with the classic puzzle game tic-tac-toe. In “Debt,” the prize was the main focus: Contestants would arrive with bills for credit cards, car payments or student loans, which would be paid off if they answered a series of questions correctly.
As a vocalist, Martindale recorded about 20 single records and seven albums. His 1959 spoken-voice narrative recording, “Deck of Cards,” sold more than 1 million copies, earning him a gold record, a designation by the Recording Industry Association of America for records that sold 500,000 copies or more. “Deck of Cards” also brought him an appearance on the Ed Sullivan variety show, where he told the tale of a young American soldier in North Africa who is arrested and charged with playing cards during a church service.
Martindale received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was one of the first inductees into the American TV Game Show Hall of Fame in 2007.
He credited some of his success to his distinctive nickname.
“When I was a kid in Jackson, Tennessee, one of my playmates, Jimmy McCord, couldn’t say ‘Winston,’ which is my given name, and he had a speech impediment, and it came out sounding like ‘Winky,’” Martindale told ABC News in 2014. “So Winston turned into Winky, and then I got into the business and Wink! It served me well, and I just kept Wink all these years.”
Winston Conrad Martindale was born in Jackson on Dec. 4, 1933, to James A. and Frances M. (Mitchell) Martindale. After graduating from high school in 1951, he attended Memphis State College (now the University of Memphis), where he landed his first disc jockey gig at a local station, earning $25 a week. He graduated with a degree in speech and drama.
“I think that I was born with a desire to be a radio announcer,” he was quoted as saying. “I always had that great desire to sit behind a microphone. My first ‘mic’ was two paper cups attached to a string. It wasn’t long before I was sitting behind the real thing.”
He later ascended to WHBQ in Memphis, Tennessee, a powerhouse station in the South, where in 1954 he notably helped to secure an on-air interview with Elvis Presley — by calling his mother — after the release of Presley’s first record, “That’s All Right.” (The interview itself was conducted by the station’s DJ Dewey Phillips.)
Martindale moved to Los Angeles in 1959 and was featured on several radio stations in and around that city, including KMPC, which was known then as the “Station of the Stars,” owned by the “singing cowboy” and actor Gene Autry. Even after finding his calling in television as a game show host, Martindale was the station’s midday personality for 12 years starting in 1971.
His marriage in 1954 to Madelyn Leech ended in divorce in 1971. They had four children, Lisa, Lyn, Laura and Wink Jr. He married Sandra Ferra, who survives him, in 1975. Martindale also had a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
———
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
© 2025 The New York Times Company
