Bob Barker, Bob Eubanks & More — The Secret Lives Of TV's Game Show Legends

From Playboy spreads to profanity, these hosts have hidden sides fans rarely see!

Richard Dawson was well known for playing wisecracking Corp. Peter Newkirk on the ’60s sitcom Hogan’s Heroes. But he’s best known as the original host of Family Feud from 1976 to 85 and 1994 to 95. One of Dawson’s trademarks — kissing female contestants — earned him the nickname The Kissing Bandit. It also earned him his second wife! In 1991, he married Gretchen Johnson, who he met when she was a member of one of the contestant families on Family Feud in May 1981. They had a daughter, Shannon Nicole Dawson. During a ’90s revival of the program, Dawson didn’t kiss female contestants, because of a commitment to his young daughter to only kiss her mother! Three weeks before his death at age 79, Dawson thought he was suffering from heartburn. It was esophageal cancer, and he died on June 2, 2012.

Bob Barker is best known for hosting CBS’ The Price Is Right from 1972 to 2007, making it the longest-running daytime game show in North American television history, and for hosting Truth or Consequences from 1956 to 1974. But the animal activist has been involved in a series of ugly lawsuits in which he’s been accused of sexual harassment and worse! Bob was involved in a relationship with The Price Is Right model Dian Parkinson from 1989 to 1991 that ended in a nasty legal tangle. In 1994, Parkinson filed suit against Barker, alleging sexual harassment following a three-year affair when she worked on the show. Parkinson, who alleged extortion by threats of firing, later dropped her lawsuit, claiming stress from the ordeal was damaging her health.

In 1995, model Holly Hallstrom left The Price Is Right and later filed suit against Barker for wrongful termination and malicious persecution. Her battle ended in a settlement in 2005. Models Janice Pennington and Kathleen Bradley, who were fired after testifying against Barker, later received financial settlements.

Born Eugene Jelyevich, the Match Game host picked the stage name "Rayburn" by sticking his finger in a phone book! True blue Rayburn was married to wife Helen from 1940 until she died in 1996. They had one daughter, Lynne. In 1985, a reporter revealed that Rayburn was much older than people believed.

After his true age was unveiled, he had trouble finding a job — and blamed the writer for subjecting him to age discrimination. Rayburn, who used a private jet to commute between his home in Massachusetts and his job in LA, became proficient in needlepoint. He died on Nov. 29, 1999, at age 81 from congestive heart failure.

Bob Eubanks, now 78, is best known for hosting the game show The Newlywed Game on and off since 1966. The native of Flint, Michigan, also hosted the successful relaunch of Card Sharks from 1986 to 1989. Recently, Eubanks has been touring with his show Backstage With the Beatles, a night of music by the Beatles cover band Ticket to Ride. It features behind-the-scenes stories from the TV icon about his involvement with the Fab Four in their early years.

JEOPARDY host Alex Trebek is serious about horsing around! Trebek, 76, was born in Greater Sudbury, Canada, in 1940, and began his broadcasting career in 1961 working for the Canadian Broadcasting Company as a newscaster and sportscaster — calling horse races. The equine bug bit him, and now his great passion is breeding and training thoroughbreds!

Trebek, who holds a Guinness World Record for “the most game show episodes hosted by the same presenter (same program)” for 6,829 episodes of Jeopardy, owned and managed the 700-acre Creston Farm ranch near Paso Robles in Creston, California, where he bred and trained racehorses! Alex’s colt Reba’s Gold is the stakes-winning son of Slew o’ Gold.

GOOOOOOD morning, Vietnam! In 1968, Pat Sajak joined the US Army and was sent to Vietnam, where he served as a disc jockey on Armed Forces Radio. After the service, he continued to work as a DJ until he latched on as a weatherman — first in Nashville, then in Los Angeles. In 1981, Merv Griffin asked Sajak, now 70, if he would be interested in taking over as host on Wheel of Fortune from Chuck Woolery, who Griffin thought was asking for too much money.

Sajak’s been hosting the show since 1981 with Vanna White at his side since 1982. For a year and a half, he hosted a late-night talk show that competed with Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show.

Tattletales, Match Game, and Win, Lose or Draw host Bert Convy went through a bitter divorce and then married a much younger woman — just weeks before his untimely death! In 1987, his first wife, Anne Anderson Convy, divorced him after almost 30 years of marriage and three children. Convy returned to TV in Win, Lose or Draw, a game show he created with pal Burt Reynolds. After a bitter divorce Convy wed a much younger Catherine Hills, 25, in 1991, after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He died on July 15, 1991, at the age of 57.

Close family! On Sept. 28, 1947, Let’s Make A Deal host Monty Hall, who’s now 95, married a distant cousin, Marilyn Doreen Plottel! The two Canadians had been introduced by a mutual cousin, Norman Shnier, the previous year. The pair became United States citizens in 1949.

They have three children; actress Joanna Gleason, Sharon Hall Kessler, head of television at Alcon Entertainment, and Richard Hall, a television producer. They have lived in Beverly Hills since 1962.

Allen Ludden can thank his show Password for finding the love of his life! After first wife Margaret McGloin died of cancer in 1961, Ludden met twice-divorced Betty White on Password. He proposed at least twice before she accepted. They finally married on June 14, 1963, and stayed together for 18 years. He died of stomach cancer in 1981.

In 2015, White said she had one big regret in her life — not marrying Ludden sooner! “I spent a whole year, wasted a whole year that Allen and I could have had together, saying, ‘No, I wouldn’t marry him. No, I won’t leave California. No, I won’t move to New York,’ ” she told Oprah Winfrey. “I wasted a whole year we could have had together. But we made it. We finally did.”

Dick Clark, who became famous for American Bandstand and was enormously successful outside the music arena with his Dick Clark Productions company, created the game show $10,000 Pyramid and countless other series and awards programs. But his career was almost cut short in the beginning by the record-company payola scandal of 1959 and 1960, one of the music industry’s darkest periods.

The federal government cracked down on the practice of paying kickbacks for playing songs, and the scandal brought down many broadcasting careers and threatened to end Clark’s! On May 2, 1960, it was Clark’s turn to testify in Washington, but when it was all over he had been cleared. After that, he got out of all music-related business, throwing away an estimated $8 million in the process!

Here’s another secret about “America’s Oldest Teenager” — he swore like a sailor! In 2006, after he suffered a massive stroke, Clark continued to host New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Staffers said that he was as hot-headed as ever when he was unhappy with a show. “At one point he barked into an open mike, ‘I can’t believe I’m still on (bleeping) camera,’ because he thought they should focus on the crowd instead of on him,” recalls one staffer.

Despite his best efforts, Clark fumbled during the New Year’s broadcast. His worst gaffe was botching the countdown. The legendary producer and host died of a massive heart attack in April 2012 at age 82.

Desperate Ray Combs left a tragic last message with his best pal, “My marriage is history and so am I.” Within hours, the Family Feud star was dangling lifeless at the end of a noose. A special investigation revealed the man who had made millions hosting America’s favorite game show had watched his life collapse around him. Debbie, his wife of 18 years, had thrown him out and he was terrified of losing contact with his six children.

He was broke, in fear of losing his house, caught in a series of affairs with women half his age and battling depression. Combs, 40, hanged himself during the early morning hours of June 2, 1996, in a closet in a Los Angeles hospital mental ward. He left his family so destitute they couldn’t afford a headstone!

Before she hit it big on Wheel of Fortune, luscious letter-turner Vanna White was so hard up for work that she posed for pictures in trashy lingerie, and the photos later turned up in Playboy magazine.

It wasn’t the first time she flashed her heavenly body! A tawdry spread of White, now 59, sunbathing topless was splashed all over another raunchy men’s magazine. White later insisted she only posed for the photos because she was so desperate for money at the time. “I was really strapped for cash,” she says. “I knew it was a mistake, and I wish I’d never agreed.” In trashy early modeling assignments, White revealed more than the next letter!

In 1953, when entertainers were being blacklisted in Hollywood, the bureau wrote a 17-page report to 
J. Edgar Hoover attempting to determine whether the super famous Groucho Marx was a Communist. Over the next decade, the FBI monitored his hit television show You Bet Your Life, searching for signs of subversion! The FBI built a file of more than 200 pages on Marx, who died in 1977 at the age of 82.