Before longtime game-show host Chuck Woolery started his decades-long career on television, he served in the U.S. Navy aboard the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.

Chuck Woolery, the charismatic game show host who kicked off the long run of Wheel of Fortune before spending 11 years playing matchmaker on Love Connection, has died. He was 83. Woolery died Saturday at his Texas home outside Austin, his friend and podcast co-host Mark Young told The Hollywood Reporter. Young also posted about it on X .

Chuck Woolery, the affable, smooth-talking game show host of “Wheel of Fortune,” “Love Connection” and “Scrabble” who later became a right-wing podcaster, skewering liberals and accusing the government of lying about COVID-19,