Happy birthday, Bob Barker! The TV game show host turns 93 on December 12, 2016.
Barker hosted CBS’s The Price Is Right from 1972 to 2007. Under his watch, it became the longest-running game show in North America.
Drew Carey took the hosting reins from Barker in 2007, and last month, The Price Is Right celebrated its 60th anniversary.
Looking back on the long-running success of the show, Barker says that it appealed to fans because it seemed to give everyone a shot at winning big.
“People always like to win prizes,” Barker said in a recent interview with Closer Weekly. “And they can win them without knowing who discovered America or anything in the way of history.”
Watch Barker open his first-ever episode:
Though Barker says he made the right decision to retire from the show at age 83, he does miss some aspects of hosting.
“People ask me, ‘What do you miss most about Price is Right?’ And I say, ‘The money,’” he told Parade in 2013. “But that is not altogether true. I miss the people, too.”
Barker, a passionate animal rights advocate, often ended episodes of The Price Is Right with the phrase, “Help control the the pet population. Have your pets spayed or neutered.”
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In retirement, Barker has been able to focus more on helping animals. He has donated millions of dollars to animal rights organizations, including spending $1 million to help transport three African elephants to a sanctuary in California. This summer, he also partnered with PETA to urge CBS to stop using real wild animals in its TV thriller Zoo.
Barker says that as proud as he is of his career on The Price Is Right, his animal rights activism is, for him, the most meaningful piece of his legacy.
“How would I like to be remembered?” he said in a 2000 interview with the Archive of American Television. “As the man who said, ‘Have your pets spayed or neutered.’”
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