Iconic 'Jeopardy' Host, Alex Trebek, Dead at 80 After Year-Long Cancer Battle

A Jeopardy representative announced Trebek's death Sunday morning.

After a year of battling advanced-stage pancreatic cancer, longtime Jeopardy host, Alex Trebek, has died. He was 80-years-old.

According to TMZ, Trebek's death was announced Sunday morning by representatives of the show, which he's headed for more than 30 years and continued to host even while undergoing chemotherapy over the last year. Trebek revealed his stage four cancer diagnosis in March of 2019, pledging to remain at his post on Jeopardy as long as he was able. A few months later, Trebek noted he was responding well to the chemo and was soon to begin immunotherapy treatments, claiming his tumors had shrunk to half their original size. In March of 2020, Trebek celebrated a year of surviving his treatments as the show began to tape without a studio audience in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The show halted production not long after, but resumed a manageable taping schedule in August. "Oddly enough, when we started taping I suddenly started to regain my strength," Trebek told The New York Times in a profile earlier this year. "It’s the strangest thing. It is some kind of an elixir," he added.

Trebek began his tenure as Jeopardy host in 1984 following stints on a number of gameshows that failed to run for more than one season. He took the reigns from Art Flemming, who hosted the original series between 1964 and 1975. After six years, the revived series was broadcasted across more than 200 stations, raking in more than 15 million nightly viewers. And even today, the show remains one of the most popular gameshows in history, still garnering an average of 24 million viewers per week.

The iconic show host is survived by his wife of 30 years, Jean Currivan, and their two children, Emily and Matthew.