10 Revelations From Alex’s Trebek’s New Memoir ‘The Answer Is … : Reflections on My Life’

On His First Experience With Rheumatism

“I had a good relationship with Barbara, my sister … I guess Barbara was 5 and I was 7,” he writes. “She was playing on a partially frozen river near the house. I saw her and her friends and chastised them.

“‘This is dangerous,’ I said. ‘You can’t do this. I’ll test the ice for you,'” he continues. “I tested the ice; it cracked and I fell in … I surfaced on the other side of the river. A railway worker not too far away spotted me and came over to help me out and took me back home … that was the beginning of about 12 years of terrible rheumatism … one day, the pain just went away.”

On His Mom and Dad’s Divorce

“My parents were two of the nicest people you’d ever want to run into … I mentioned earlier that my parents cared deeply for each other, but they were ill-suited,” he says of his late mom, Lucille Lagacé, and dad, George Trebek. “Dad was a smoker and a heavy drinker. Mom was a teetotaler, and she was brighter than he was. Divorce was almost unheard of in our community, but they separated, which caused me no end of grief. Somehow I thought it was my fault because they had been ‘forced’ to marry.”

On Learning He Had a Stepbrother

“My mother left Sudbury and moved to Detroit. When she and my father broke up, she took up with a gentleman in Sudbury, and he got her pregnant,” he explains. “He didn’t want to marry her, so she left town and had the baby [boy] and gave him up for adoption.”

“I didn’t know I had a half brother until shortly after I started hosting Jeopardy!,” he notes. “He and I have communicated over the years, but we are not close. Because of the way things happened, I had kind of a resentment for my mother. But we settled that before she died — long before she died.”

On Once Accidentally Doing Drugs

“I did have one unintentional experience with drugs,” Alex recalls. “I was invited to a dinner party in Malibu. There were chocolate brownies on a plate. The hosts said, ‘Go ahead, help yourself.’ I had four or five of them. I did not realize they were hash brownies. The drugs knocked me out so much I spent the weekend laid out in their guest bedroom and didn’t leave their home until Monday morning.”

On His Divorce From His First Wife Elaine

“I have never experienced anything like [spite] with my first wife, Elaine. We divorced in 1981. It was amicable. We didn’t use attorneys. I think it cost about $320 in fees,” the former Wizard of Odds host shares. “We sold the house, and Elaine got the cash. I got a mortgage. She went out and bought another house. My mother went to live with her and continued to raise Nicky [Elaine’s daughter].”

“I had no cash, so I borrowed a little money from Elaine and bought a house … directly across the street from her. It sounds unconventional, but it suited all of us,” he goes on. “My relationships with Elaine and Nicky remain strong. Though I never adopted Nicky — her biological father was alive at the time — I refer to her as my daughter by osmosis. Elaine and my current wife, Jean, are close. When my kids, Emily and Matthew, were in high school, Elaine would give them summer jobs … we’re all a very close-knit, happy family.”

On the Importance of Giving Back

“When I first went to Africa, I immediately felt at a visceral level: This is home. This is where I come from. I belong here. I feel that every time I go there,” he marvels. “I know that’s where civilization began, and I feel it in my gut … I stand in Africa and I say, ‘I’m home.'”

On Falling in Love With Jean

“I wasn’t looking for love. But with Jean, I recognized at a gut level that here was someone who was going to complete me as a human being,” he sweetly dishes. “I don’t know if Jeanie was as instantly certain about me as I was about her. I think at first she might’ve thought I was a bit of a jerk.”

On the Challenges of Fatherhood

“The most challenging thing about fatherhood is that it introduced an element of fear into my life. It’s not just the kids I worry about. It’s Jeanie too,” he admits. “To be honest, I followed Jean’s lead on parenting. She is the calming influence. She has a more understanding personality than I am. She’s not as rigid.”

On Going Public With His Cancer Battle

“There are moments when I have some regrets about having gone public with my diagnosis,” Alex reveals. “Because I have become in many ways the de facto spokesperson for pancreatic cancer, there are a lot of expectations, a lot of people looking to me for reassurance. I feel a lot of pressure to always be tough, to be stoic and show a stiff upper lip. But I’m a goddam wuss. I start to cry for no reason at all. I have no idea what sets it off, and it embarrasses me.”

On the Topic of Death

“I’m not afraid of dying. One thing they’re not going to say at my funeral as part of the eulogy is ‘He was taken from us too soon,'” he insists. “I’m about to turn 80. I’ve lived a good, full life and I’m nearing the end of it. I know that. The only thing that might bother me is if I pass on before I get to have grandchildren.”