One year later, Canadian icon Alex Trebek is greatly missed.
In a video release on Monday to mark the anniversary of the “Jeopardy!” host’s passing, champion player Ken Jennings reflected the loss.
“I miss Alex a lot,” he says, standing on the “Jeopardy!” set. “When I’m in here, I kind of, I feel like he’s probably in the building somewhere. It’s hard not to talk about him in the present tense.”
Jennings then shares a particularly spacial memory of the host, and a keepsake that helps him remember Trebek.
“The first day I came in to guest host was just a few weeks after Alex had passed and it was a really rough time. I got to the studio and one of the producers handed me a little box and Alex’s wife Jean had given me a pair of his cuff links that he had worn on the show,” he says.
“What a lovely gesture that was from Jean. You know, at a time that was very hard for her family, dealing with a lot of grief and a lot of challenges, she thought about ‘Jeopardy!’ and she thought about me, a person she had never even met,” he continues. “And I just thought, ‘What a lovely thing to do.’ She’s fantastic. I am wearing them today.”
Showing off the cuff links, Jennings adds, “My Alex Trebek cuff links are the only cuff links I own. They’re kind of a good luck charm for me here.”
Jennings also shared that he will be guest hosting “Jeopardy!” again this week, taking over from Mayim Bialik.
I'm tagging in from @missmayim and hosting some @Jeopardy again starting this week. Always an honor and a real joy to be back where it all started. (Also, it's been a minute so I hope I'm not too rusty out there.)
— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) November 8, 2021
Trebek passed away last year at age 80 after a public battle with pancreatic cancer.
