Contestants come and go. Here’s our returning champion. He’s from Maryland, she’s from Chicago. Some, like this year’s star, Arthur Chu, even briefly become big deals. But it is Alex Trebek who has remained the centerpiece. His extended tenure as America’s senior-most faculty member has made Americans forget that he’s playing a part; a few years ago, Trebek was voted the eighth-most-trusted person in the United States, sandwiched between Bill and Melinda Gates. “He’s like a Ward Cleaver figure,” says Ken Jennings, the most successful “Jeopardy!” contestant ever. “But for the past thirty years.” This month, in fact, the host will mark three decades as the face and voice of “Jeopardy!”; like the show’s theme music, he is almost post-iconic, such a known entity that he’s just there.
He might not be there for much longer, though. “Jeopardy!” continues to draw around 25 million viewers per week, making it second among syndicated game shows (behind only “Wheel of Fortune,” which “Jeopardy!” fans dismiss as little better than a televised jumble puzzle). But Trebek has hinted that he will retire when his contract runs out in 2016. Already he has outlasted Jay Leno and now David Letterman as one of the final one-man TV brands from the time before DVRs. Audience shares and attention spans, however, aren’t the only things that have changed during his run. In the Internet era, knowing a little about a lot provides diminished cachet: You don’t have to retain facts when they can just be Googled. These days there’s a throwback charm to the whole “Jeopardy!” enterprise and the appeal, in Trebek’s late-career performances, of a simple job well done. (...)
Trebek has built his career on an air of erudition. But offscreen he is equally invested in a second persona, one that colleagues say has emerged more in recent years. This other Trebek is “much less of a ‘Masterpiece Theater’ guy,” is how a staffer puts it. “He’s more of a getting-his-hands-dirty guy.”
So even as Trebek might casually draw the solar system during conversation—because of course that’s a thing the host of “Jeopardy!” would do—he also takes pride in noting that he was almost kicked out of boarding school as a boy. He sometimes brags about his breakfast of Snickers and Diet Pepsi and likes to talk about the rec-league hockey games he suited up for with Dave Coulier (the “Full House” star who was not John Stamos, Bob Saget, or an Olsen twin). He has had two heart attacks but sums up his current exercise regimen as “I drink.” Yes, Trebek can describe for you the 1928 Mouton that he once tasted. But, he is quick to joke: “I’m not a true wine connoisseur. I’m just a drinker.”
Fact, according to Trebek: His favorite place in Los Angeles these days is Home Depot. He and his second wife, Jean, whom Trebek married in 1990 when she was 26 and he was a 49-year-old divorcé, live in a nice house in the Valley, and he spends a great deal of time thinking about maintenance and improvements (which he accomplishes with the help of “Manuel and Miguel”). Trebek says that when he gets up in the middle of the night—he has terrible insomnia—he will lie awake for hours plotting how to fix the sliver of light peeking through his window, and all the other home-repair projects he wants to tackle next.
by Noreen Malone, TNR | Read more:
Image: Ian Allen
