Jeopardy host Alex Trebek dies of pancreatic cancer at 80

Legendary Jeopardy host Alex Trebek has died of cancer at age 80, the game show announced Sunday on Twitter.

Jeopardy! is saddened to share that Alex Trebek passed away peacefully at home early this morning, surrounded by family and friends. Thank you, Alex. pic.twitter.com/Yk2a90CHIM

— Jeopardy! (@Jeopardy) November 8, 2020

Trebek revealed in a video he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer in March of last year and continued working on the game show while he underwent chemotherapy treatment.

In the video, Trebek said he was joining the 50,000 other Americans who receive such a diagnosis each year and that he recognized that the prognosis was not encouraging.

But Trebek said he intended to fight it and keep working, even joking that he needed to beat the disease because his “Jeopardy!” contract ran for three more years. Less than a week later, he opened the show with a message acknowledging the outpouring of kind words and prayers he’d received.

“Thanks to the — believe it or not — hundreds of thousands of people who have sent in tweets, texts, emails, cards and letters wishing me well,” Trebek said. “I’m a lucky guy.”

An outpouring of grief from former contestants and the wider public quickly followed news of his death.

“Alex wasn’t just the best ever at what he did. He was also a lovely and deeply decent man, and I’m grateful for every minute I got to spend with him,” tweeted “Jeopardy!” champion Ken Jennings. “Thinking today about his family and his Jeopardy! family — which, in a way, included millions of us.”

The famed host, born in Sudbury, Canada, began his career announcing the news for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1961.

He made his American TV debut in 1973 as the host of NBC’s game show “Wizard of Odds,” before becoming the host of Jeopardy in 1984.

Trebek was a master of the format, engaging in friendly banter with contestants, appearing genuinely pleased when they answered correctly and, at the same time, moving the game along in a brisk no-nonsense fashion whenever people struggled for answers.

He never pretended to know the answers himself if he really didn’t, deferring to the show’s experts to decide whether a somewhat vague answer had come close enough to be counted as correct.

“I try not to take myself too seriously,” he told an interviewer in 2004. “I don’t want to come off as a pompous ass and indicate that I know everything when I don’t.”

In a January 2019 interview with The Associated Press, Trebek discussed his decision to keep going with “Jeopardy!”

“It’s not as if I’m overworked — we tape 46 days a year,” he said. But he acknowledged he would retire someday, if he lost his edge or the job was no longer fun, adding: “And it’s still fun.”

Trebek won seven Daytime Emmy awards for Outstanding Game Show Host as well as a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences over the course of his career.

In 2014, he attained the Guinness World Record for “Most Game Show Episodes Hosted by the Same Presenter” for the more than 8,000 episodes he hosted.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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