Alex Trebek opens up about his deep love for wife Jean in a new interview with People.
Trebek, 80, who reveals how Jean, 56, has been his rock through his stage 4 pancreatic cancer diagnosis in his new memoir, The Answer Is… Reflections On My Life, tells the magazine: “She’s kept me alive. If it weren’t for Jean, I’d have put myself out of this a long time ago.”
The couple, who just celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary, met through a friend back in 1988 when Trebek was 47 and had been hosting “Jeopardy!” for just four years.
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The host had just got divorced from his first wife, businesswoman Elaine Callei, when he met Jean, then 23, who was doing part-time bookkeeping for one of Trebek’s friends.
Trebek writes in his book, “With Jean it just happened. Sometimes you look at something, you look at someone, and you know. I mean, you’ve heard stories of people who meet and decide within half an hour; I knew this was going to be the person I’d end up with.”
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“With Jeanie that’s how it was. I wasn’t looking for love. But I recognized at a gut level that here was someone who was going to complete me as a human being.”
Trebek also talks about his childhood, early work, and his family in the tell-all release.
