Tom Kennedy was born James Edward Narz in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1927, the younger brother of a boy who would also grow up to host television game shows. For nearly three decades, the two brothers, working under different names so audiences would not confuse them, became two of the most familiar faces in American daytime television, presiding over some of the medium’s longest-running quiz and word games.
Kennedy hosted fourteen game shows between 1958 and 1989, including You Don’t Say!, Split Second, Name That Tune, and Password Plus. He remained close with his brother, Jack Narz, throughout both of their careers, and the two were honored together in 2005 for their lifetime contributions to the genre they helped define. Their father worked to support the family in Louisville, and neither brother set out as a child to become a broadcaster; both found their way into radio work almost by accident before building parallel careers three thousand miles from home.
Growing Up in Louisville
James Edward Narz was born on February 26, 1927, in Louisville, the younger son of John Lawrence Narz Sr. and his wife, joining an older brother, John Lawrence Narz Jr., who was known throughout his own broadcasting career as Jack Narz. Their sister, Mary, also grew up in the family’s Louisville household, of Lithuanian descent on their father’s side.
Inspired by his older brother, who had already begun building a career in broadcasting, young Narz got his own start in radio while still in school and spent roughly a decade in the business, including stints at WKLX in Lexington, before deciding to try his luck in Hollywood. He arrived in Los Angeles in 1947, the same city his brother Jack had settled in a few years earlier after his own wartime service, and the two brothers built their broadcasting careers largely in parallel from that point forward.
A Name Change to Avoid Confusion
Narz attended the University of Missouri and the University of Kentucky, working at radio station KFRU in Columbia, Missouri, along the way. In Lexington, Kentucky, he met and married Betty Gevedon, his college sweetheart. By the mid-1950s, both brothers were building careers as on-air hosts, and their shared surname created a practical problem for advertisers and audiences alike.
“After a lunch meeting with his agent, he emerged as Tom Kennedy.”
— David Narz, on his uncle’s decision to change his professional name in 1957
The brothers, according to Jack’s son David, wanted to avoid the perceived conflict of having two announcers with the same last name promoting competing products on rival networks. In 1957, James Edward Narz adopted the professional name Tom Kennedy, a name he would keep for the rest of his television career.
Three Decades of Game Shows
Kennedy’s breakthrough came with You Don’t Say!, which ran on NBC from 1963 to 1969 and returned briefly on ABC in 1975. The show challenged celebrity panelists to describe well-known phrases without saying the key words, a format that suited Kennedy’s easy, conversational hosting style.
He went on to host Split Second from 1972 to 1975 and Name That Tune from 1974 to 1981, two of the more durable game show formats of the era, with Name That Tune pitting contestants against each other to identify songs in as few notes as possible. In 1980, he took over Password Plus following the illness of original host Allen Ludden, steering the show through its final seasons.
His other credits included Dr. I.Q., Break the Bank, 50 Grand Slam, To Say the Least, It’s Your Bet, Whew!, Body Language, a syndicated nighttime edition of The Price Is Right, and Wordplay, along with guest appearances as a panelist on To Tell the Truth and Hollywood Squares. Few hosts of the era worked across as many competing networks and formats over a single career.
A Recaptured Feeling from Radio
“I remembered the radio show and the early show with George DeWitt, they’re talking about. Norman ‘Red’ Benson did the show, Bill Cullen did the show, and I remembered those days, and I thought if we could recapture some of that, we’ll be lucky; and we took off.”
— Tom Kennedy, on reviving the feel of earlier game shows for a new audience
That instinct for recapturing an earlier era of broadcasting, drawn from the same radio roots that had first brought him and his brother into the business, ran through much of Kennedy’s on-air work over the following decades.
Brothers on Screen Together
Despite hosting separate, competing shows, the brothers frequently appeared together on each other’s programs. Kennedy guest-starred on Narz’s Beat the Clock, and Narz appeared as a panelist on Kennedy’s Password Plus, once even trading places with his brother mid-episode to host for the remainder of the broadcast. Both also served together as celebrity panelists on To Tell the Truth.
Acting Roles Beyond the Game Show Podium
Beyond hosting, Kennedy took on a number of small acting roles over the years, appearing as a guest performer on series including The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, Cannon, That Girl, and Hardcastle and McCormick. He also briefly hosted his own daytime talk program, The Real Tom Kennedy Show, in the early 1970s, stepping outside the game show format he had built his career on.
Those side projects never displaced his central identity as a quiz show host, but they reflected an entertainer comfortable moving between formats, a trait he shared with his brother Jack, who also took occasional acting and voice work between hosting jobs throughout his own career in Los Angeles television.
Later Years and Recognition
Kennedy retired from hosting in 1989 after several pilots produced by his own production company failed to sell, though he made an occasional return appearance, including a 2003 spot on Hollywood Squares during a game show anniversary week. In July 2005, Kennedy and Jack Narz were named co-recipients of the Game Show Congress’s Bill Cullen Award for Lifetime Achievement, an honor named for a host who was also their brother-in-law through marriage.
Kennedy was married to Betty Gevedon from 1952 until her death in 2011, and the couple raised four children: Linda Ann, Courtney Ellen, James Jr., and a daughter who predeceased him. He died at his home in Oxnard, California, on October 7, 2020, at the age of ninety-three, outliving his brother Jack by twelve years.
His close friend Steve Beverly, who described Kennedy as a childhood broadcasting idol who became a genuine lifelong friend, confirmed his death publicly. Kennedy was survived by his children, a granddaughter, and his sister, Mary Lovett Scully, closing out a Louisville family story that had stretched from a modest radio job in Kentucky to three decades on national television.