“The hardest working man in show business,” Regis Philbin, a longtime Greenwich resident, died in Manhattan on Friday, July 24 of natural causes, a month short of his 89th birthday.
Philbin, who held the Guinness World Record for the most hours on US television, was a media personality, actor, and singer, who hosted both talk shows and game shows.
He got his national start in 1967 on the Joey Bishop Show where he was Bishop’s sidekick and announcer.
Philbin hosted Miss America pageants as well as ABC’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” (1999 to 2002), and season one of “America’s Got Talent,” but he was especially known in Greenwich as the co-host of “Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee,” the morning show he and Kathie Lee Gifford, also a longtime Greenwich resident, hosted together.
He subsequently hosted “Live! with Regis and Kelly” with Kelly Ripa and retired from that show in 2011.
Philbin and Gifford will be remembered as a staple of morning television, sharing jokes and anecdotes about their lives and interviewing celebrities.
Philbin and his wife Joy recently made local headlines when they sold their mansion in back country and moved to California to spend more time with family.
Philbin, who is survived by his wife and four children, will be remembered for his humility, sense of humor and tremendous energy.