Alex Trebek's widow feels 'waves of grief' after his death

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Jean Trebek is still having trouble coming to terms with the loss of her late husband, legendary Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek.

Jean spoke with Today co-host Savannah Guthrie as part of the Saturday prime-time special, Inspiring America: The 2021 Inspiration List, and reflected on her partner, who died at age 80 in November following a battle with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

“I absolutely have moments of waves of grief that just come over me, I miss him a lot,” Jean said in a clip, which was shared Wednesday morning.

Jean, who was married to Alex for 30 years, said that the couple was surprised by how many lives he had touched.

“I think one of the beautiful things, the blessings that came, if you can call it a blessing, was that he got to really see the outpouring of love and admiration that he gave to the world,” she said. “And some people just, you know, you don’t see that while you’re still embodied, you don’t get to really witness all the love that people feel for you. And I know that was in and of itself a huge inspiration for Alex.”

Elsewhere in her conversation with Guthrie, Jean recalled the Jeopardy! episode in which contestant Dhruv Gaur wagered $1,995 as he answered a Final Jeopardy question with: “What is, ‘We love you, Alex.'”

“When that contestant wrote that, you know, you could see him, like, ‘Oh, don’t make me cry here but I love it.’ And I think that meant the world to him,” Jean said.

In his recent memoir, The Answer Is…Reflections On My Life, which was released last summer, Alex reflected on his romance with Jean.

“Sometimes you look at something, you look at someone, and you know. I mean, you’ve heard stories of people who meet and decide within half an hour; I knew this was going to be the person I’d end up with. With Jeanie that’s how it was. I wasn’t looking for love. But I recognized at a gut level that here was someone who was going to complete me as a human being,” he wrote.

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And in a conversation with People magazine in 2019, Alex spoke about his regret that he and Jean didn’t meet when they were younger.

“I’m pretty satisfied with my life,” he said. “But my wife Jean and I have been together almost 29 years, and I was thinking about President Bush when he died, and all the comments about his life about what a nice guy he is, and how he and his wife had been together 73 years. I thought, oh my gosh … if I’d just met Jean in my 20s we could have had a longer life together.”

The couple, who married in 1990, were parents to son Matthew, 30, and daughter Emily, 27.

Inspiring America: The 2021 Inspiration List airs Saturday at 8 p.m. on NBC

mdaniell@postmedia.com