Peter Tomarken
American television personality (1942–2006)
Peter David Tomarken (December 7, 1942 – March 13, 2006) was an American television personality primarily known as the host of the game show Press Your Luck.
Early life
Tomarken was born in Olean, New York, the middle son of Barnett and Pearl Tomarken, who owned Dee's Jewelry store in Olean. His family was Jewish, members of Temple B'nai Israel. They relocated to Beverly Hills, California, in the early 1950s. Peter graduated from Beverly Hills High School in 1960 and from UCLA with a bachelor's degree in English. Before hosting game shows, he appeared as a contestant on The Rebus Game in the 1960s.
After graduating from college, Tomarken married his first wife, Dana, who later served on the Beverly Hills Board of Education from 1985 to 1993. He and Dana had three children: Jason, and fraternal twin sisters, Alexis and Candace.
Tomarken worked on the magazines Women's Wear Daily and Business Week in New York City during the late 1960s before moving back to California to work at various advertising agencies. He made an appearance as a reporter in the 1978 film Heaven Can Wait, as well as the character Roe in "The Secret Empire" portion of the short lived NBC series Cliffhangers.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Peter Tomarken” as american television personality (1942–2006). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7177339. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1942, 2006, 1960 and 1985.
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This entry incorporates text from “Peter Tomarken” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.