Born in 1917 in Illinois, Eugune Rubessa kicked off his life working in local radio yet would go on to be one of the most succesful & most popular TV game show hosts in history. He altered his name to Gene Rayburn (by randomly picking a name in the phone book) to commence an entertainment career in radio on WNEW's popular morning comedy show, "Rayburn and Dee-Finch". After he left the program in the mid 1950s, Gene went to NBC and became the announcer/sidekick for Steve Allen's "The Tonight Show". As "The Tonight Show" began to increase in popularity, Rayburn began to gain new-found respect as Allen's second bannana on the late-night variety show. Rayburn was offered jobs all over Hollywood. Mark Goodson and other game show executives hired Rayburn to host several short-lived game shows, including "Make the Connection" and "Choose Up Sides", yet Rayburn wasn't satisified. But in 1962, five years after Allen left "The Tonight Show",  Rayburn was tapped to host "The Match Game", a game of justice involving two teams and name something questions. It became a hit for the NBC network, and was regularly in the top three game shows during its rather quiet seven-year run. In 1973, four years after TMG went off the air, the TV game show was reprived for a bawdy revival with outrageous fill-in-the-blanks and a maudlin panel of star-studded celebrities. Within a mere six weeks, "Match Game '73" hit the jackpot by becoming the #1 Daytime TV Program. As emcee of the CBS game show, Rayburn was famed for three specific show occurrences: (1) he used a lengthy and incredibly thin Sony microphone (2) he had a classic impression of Old Man Periwnikle, a fictional man whose name was a staple in many Match Game questions and (3) in a 1974 taping, he mistakenly told a female contestant that she had "pretty nipples", intending to utter, "dimples." His style of emceeing became famous. He consistently attacked stagehands (jokingly), interacted with the panel and the celebs, made the best of humor, created classic Match Game characters like Old Man Periwinkle and Dumb Dora, exchanged in hilarious conversations with Brett Somers and Charles Nelson Reilly, fiddled with his mic, had stunning entrances (including breaking through the doors, roller skating on stage, running around the audience, etc.), criticized the audience in jest (ex.: "Please no help, becuase you may be giving the contestant one of your rotten answers"), and enganged in several other antics. When it came to politics, viewers got to know Mr. Rayburn as an exteremely liberal Democrat, once on the air on an MG episode referring to Bill Buckley, a conservative ally of President Ronald Reagan, as one who is consistently misjudging the politcial scene. Americans know Rayburn as best as the antics master on the enormously popular MG revival, yet his enthusiasim slightly died down in late 1977, after the CBS network moved the show to an awful time spot in the morning. Due to the insane time slot switch, MG's large audience drowned, as it gradually began to lose viewers to Richard Dawson's Family Feud. In April of 1979, CBS cut the show off its schedule. It continued in syndication until 1982, when it was all together cancelled. After it went off the air, Rayburn co-hosted "The Match Game/Hollywood Squares Hour" and presided over the very poorly coordinated "Break the Bank", both in the mid-80s. Both games were cancelled after a single season on the air, due to poor ratings and terrible game rules. The host was actually fired from "Break the Bank" after 13 weeks on the job, largely due to his lack of kidness for the game and due to a salary issue with producers. Television critics and viewers however never accused Rayburn of being the main cause of hurting both shows. If there was anything that actually kept those shows on the air for any period of time, it was Rayburn's hosting. He hosted his final game show, "The Movie Masters", in 1989 and by the early 1990s, network executives considered him as a "retired" celebrity. Rayburn made appearances on several talk shows, when they had "Match Game" or game show-themed topics. His final interviews were conducted with A&E on when it profiled former Match Game & Family Feud producer Mark Goodson in its Biography TV series in 1997 & with Access Hollywood in 1998 to discuss the 25th anniversary of MG. Rayburn passed away at the age of 81 on November 29, 1999 of heart failure, just two years following his wife Helen's death (Rayburn had ocassionally appeared with his wife on Tattletales, the husband-and-wife CBS guessing game hosted by Bert Convy.)  He is missed and loved by all. What makes his death even sadder is that, his goal was to make people laugh, he'd do anything for a laugh---and it worked. CNN correctly described him as "jocular" when he passed away just four weeks before the dawn of the new millenium. Audiences still love the game show host's goofy antics, now being displayed every night on GSN.

  Brett Somers is best known for being Charles Nelson Reilly's banter-exchanger on "Match Game" from 1973-82, but Somers also had a reoccuring role on "The Odd Couple" in the 1970s. She played "Blanche Madison", Oscar's wife, on the popular ABC situation comedy and later played "Gertaurde Lade" on "The New Perry Mason" in 1973. In 1973, Somers was pitched as a regular panelist on "Match Game", a popular CBS game show at the time. The game show yukfest brought Somers even more popularity, as it soared to unimaginable heights as the #1 daytime show on the air with nearly 13 million viewers. Somers seemed witty & comedically cross on the TV show, yet enjoyed a laugh with host Gene Rayburn ocassionally & consistently humorously verbally argued & cracked jokes with side-by-side fellow regular Charles Nelson Reilly on the show. Ever since Match Game was cut off the air in 1982 after a mostly succesful near-decade on CBS & in syndication, she has made a few appearances on "Match Game 90" with longtime pal Reilly, a 90s revival of "Match Game" and made appeared on a game show-retrospective episode of "Maury" with Gene Rayburn in 1997. Five years later, she was on a "Match Game" Retro Reunion on CBS' "The Early Show" along with Charles Nelson Reilly, with whom she enjoyed several laughs, & Betty White where she revealed that rumors of her having breast cancer were false and dispelled one of Hollywood's best-kept secrets. In the 'retro reunion', she conceded that the "Match Game" panel did occasionally get drunk on vino, in between tapings. In her remaining days on this earth, Somers was the star of the Broadway play "An Evening with Brett Somers" and was interviewed extensively for GSN's "Behind the Blank: The Real Story of Match Game" special and hosted the Match Game DVD box set. Somers sadly passed away on September 15, 2007 of stomach and colon cancer in the second prominent "Match Game" death of 2007.

For a game show fanatic, picking their favorite "Match Game" panelist couldn't be an easier task. Charles Nelson Reilly was one of the game show world's biggest stars, and hilarious on episodes of "Match Game"". Ever since he  was a kid being raised in the Bronx in the 1930s and 1940s, Reilly yearned to be a star. He started out in a career on broadway, winning a Tony for his performances in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" and "Hello, Dolly". In fact, broadway was where Reilly met some his future acquiantances, including "Match Game" host Gene Rayburn on the set of "Bye, Bye, Birdie". Reilly later performed many skits on NBC's summer replacement in the late 60s and early 70s, "The Dean Martin Goldiggers Summer Show". Reilly also co-starred in the hugely popular sitcom, "The Ghost and Ms. Muir", which became a ratings hit in the late 1960s. During the mid-1970s, Reilly frequently did voices for many network morning cartoons. But it was as a panelist on a goofy CBS game show that brought him fame and fortune. Reilly was a regular panelist on "Match Game" from 1973-82, making audiences laugh every afternoon on the popular yukfest fill-in-the-blank carnival. His antics on the set included New Years festivals, jokes on Rayburn's specific style of reading questions, wearing of out-of-this world attire including a scarf, captain's hat, pipe, and other additions, and giving hilariously detailed answers. He is best remembered for always arguing with fellow MG regular panelist Brett Somers in what was somewhat of a comedy routine. Somers and Reilly have fond memories of their time on Match Game and they would stil contact each other and congraulate each other on post-retirement successess after the show went off the air. More recently, Reilly starred in an independent, obscure film entitled, "The Life of Reilly", which recounts his life in the Broadway and television fields. Sadly enough, on May 25, 2007, Reilly passed away at the age of 76, forever remembered as a loveable, genial television personality of unspeakable talent.

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Dubbed the "Queen of Sitcoms & Game Shows", Betty White launched her career at the age of 16 in radio and after that became of one of the biggest stars to ever come upon the entertainment industry. White's first TV Series, "Life with Elizabeth" became a two-season hit and soon Betty White's face was being recognized all over the country. White married "Password" host Allen Ludden in the early 1960s, after they both met each other on the set of the one-clue game show, and suddenly White became a very frequent celebrity guest on "Password", appearing in every single version of the game show from 1961-1989. In 1973, White had earned media attention and more laughs than anyone can imagine on the popular CBS sitcom, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", as Sue Ann Nivens, a role which which earned her two Emmys. Outside of "MTM", White had also become a game show superstar as a frequent panelist on several game shows from the 1950s to the 1980s including, "Password", "Match Game" and "The 25,000 Dollar Pyramid". After "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" went off the air in 1977 after a succesful seven seasons, White earned her own short-lived one-season program in the 1978, called "The Betty White Show", a hilarious spoof on the TV news business, which some people say deserved a longer run. White became an even more frequent panelist on "Match Game" and a regular on her husband's syndicated game show, "Liar's Club". After Ludden died of cancer in 1981, Betty White had disappeared from television except for ocassional apperances on "Password Plus", then hosted by Tom Kennedy, and the syndicated version of "Match Game". However, in 1984, White won an Emmy for Outstanding Game Show Host or Hostess for "Just Men!", a popular NBC game show in the 1980s, and became the only woman in the history of television to win the presitgous game show award. Betty White had gotten back into the business by 1985, and had returned to sitcoms with a reoccuring role on the popular sitcom, "Mama's Family", a spin-off of a "Carol Burnett Show" skit and later played the dimwitted Rose Nylund on "The Golden Girls", a TV comedy that ran for seven years and became White's biggest success, giving her a fourth Emmy. From the 1990s' to 2021, White's career started to slow down, but it did not spot. She played reoccuring characters on the sitcoms, "Maybe This Time" in 1995 and CBS's "Ladies Man" and in 2002, with her appearance on a revived version of "Pyramid", she became one of only nine celebrities to be a  "Six-Decade Game Show Panelist". The next year, in March of 2003, White co-starred in the hilarious Steve Martin comedy, "Bringing Down the House", which turned out to be a box-office hit. She also starred in "Hot in Cleveland" on TV Land in the 2010s as she endeared herself to a whole new generation of fans. On her huge success, White said, "I just think I'm the luckiest old broad to still be woking". On New Year's Eve 2021, Betty White died just shy of her 100th birthday. Her amazing pop culture legacy earned tributes from across Hollywood and elsewhere, including from President Joe Biden who said, of White, that she was "an American treasure who...moved our souls."