Chuck Woolery hosts a special premiere of the “$250,000 Game Show Spectacular” in October 2007 in Las Vegas. Ronda Churchill/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP

Chuck Woolery, the game show veteran who hosted the original “Wheel of Fortune” and “Love Connection” and later refashioned himself into a conservative commentator, died Nov. 23 at 83.

Mark Young, Mr. Woolery’s friend and the co-host of their podcast, “Blunt Force Truth,” wrote on X that he had died and said life would “not be the same without him.”

The Associated Press reported that Young said Mr. Woolery died at his home in Texas in the presence of his wife.

Mr. Woolery was the first host of the long-running game show “Wheel of Fortune” when it premiered on NBC in January 1975. He was replaced by Pat Sajak when he asked for a pay raise and producer Merv Griffin refused, according to the AP.

From 1983 to 1994, Mr. Woolery hosted “Love Connection,” in which participants went on dates and the audience got to weigh in on their choices. Throughout his career, he hosted at least eight other shows on television and streaming and was the subject of a reality show that aired on the Game Show Network. He was nominated for a daytime Emmy award in 1978.

Mr. Woolery was born in Ashland, Kentucky, on March 16, 1941. He served in the Navy on the USS Enterprise after graduating from high school. After college, he pursued music while working as a truck driver on the side to support himself, the AP reported. He moved to Nashville in the hopes of making it as a musician and joined a psychedelic pop band named the Avant-Garde that produced one nationally known song, “Naturally Stoned,” in 1968. He later released several solo records that did not receive much commercial success.

His career in television began when he was invited to sing on “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” Mr. Woolery said. Griffin saw his performance and invited him to appear on “The Merv Griffin Show,” where he performed “Delta Dawn,” according to the AP.

Recalling their interaction years later, Mr. Woolery said Griffin told him, “‘You have an interesting ability: You talk a lot, but you also listen very, very well.’ And he said: ‘Would you ever consider being a game show host?’”

“It obviously had never crossed my mind,” recalled Mr. Woolery, who said he accepted “just to be nice.” He “didn’t really particularly want to be a game show host,” he said, adding that his lack of technical background made him better able to relate with the contestants on “Wheel of Fortune.”

In 2012, Mr. Woolery, who identified as a “Hollywood conservative,” launched a radio show, “Save Us Chuck Woolery,” that was later turned into “Blunt Force Truth.”

Though he told the New York Times in 2017 that he was “not a (Donald) Trump backer in the beginning,” he said he “eventually got on board for fear of losing the Constitution altogether, for fear of going down this hypersocialist road.” He embraced Trump’s crackdown on immigration and his pledge to “drain the swamp” of Washington, calling him “the greatest President we ever had.” He also labeled the Jan. 6 Committee, which investigated the 2021 attack on the Capitol and Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, a “witch hunt.”

In 2020, Trump retweeted a message from Mr. Woolery during the height of the coronavirus pandemic that accused the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of “lying” to the American public about covid-19.

Mr. Woolery later clarified in a post on X that he believed covid-19 was “real” after his son tested positive for the virus. “I feel for of those suffering and especially for those who have lost loved ones,” he wrote.