“COME ON DOWN!” The Untold Love Story and Off-Camera Life of Price Is Right Voice Legend Johnny Olson

If you grew up with The Price Is Right, you don’t just remember the games—you remember the voice. Before a single bid was shouted, before Barker’s skinny mic even rose, Johnny Olson could electrify a studio with four words that still live rent-free in America’s brain: “Come on down!”

But here’s the part most of us never stopped to wonder about: Who was Johnny when the lights went out? What did he do before he became the golden-throated gatekeeper of Showcase Showdowns—and did that famous TV charm ever spill into romance with the show’s glamorous models?

The “radio boy” who could sing his way into your living room

Johnny Olson was born John Leonard Olson in Windom, Minnesota, in 1910, and he didn’t start out as a game-show icon—he started out as a radio guy with timing, music, and a big personality. In the mid-1930s he was working at WTMJ in Milwaukee, where he performed and hosted, including a call-in show where listeners requested songs for him to sing.

And that’s where the first great plot twist happens.

The caller who became the love of his life

One of those listeners wasn’t just a fan—she was the fan: Penny Powers, who called in often enough that she and Johnny’s story turned from “request line” to real life. They married in 1939, and Penny became far more than a spouse—she was an on-air partner with performance chops of her own (singing and dancing from childhood).

By 1944, Johnny’s first network radio job in New York was hosting “Ladies Be Seated”—with Penny. In other words: before he became TV’s most famous announcer, he was already building a career as part of a two-person act.

Before Barker… there was DuMont, talk shows, and a very busy TV life

Long before he lived at CBS Studio 33, Olson worked in early television, including hosting on the DuMont Television Network, plus a run of hosting/announcing gigs across the late ’40s and ’50s.

And back in Wisconsin, his “Rumpus Room” era became the kind of legend old radio people still grin about—bringing in major performers of the day (like Spike Jones and the Andrews Sisters) as guests.

By the time America “met” him, his voice had already been everywhere: To Tell the Truth, What’s My Line?, Match Game, even The Jackie Gleason Show—the kind of résumé that made him feel weirdly familiar, even if you didn’t know his name.

People who knew him didn’t describe him like a mere announcer—they described him like a performer. A Los Angeles Times obituary quoted the show’s director saying Olson had an “operatic” voice and could read an entire page “in one breath.”

So… did Johnny Olson date any of “The Price Is Right girls”?

Here’s the honest answer: there’s no solid public reporting that he dated any of the show’s models. What is clearly documented is that he was married to Penny for 46 years, and multiple contemporaneous reports mention Penny as his surviving spouse—no scandal taglines, no whispered “affairs,” just a long partnership. Could there have been playful on-camera chemistry and that friendly showbiz warmth? Sure—Price practically ran on flirtatious sparkle. But if you’re looking for confirmed romance, Johnny’s real love story seems to have been the one that started on a Milwaukee request line and lasted the rest of his life.

The final curtain—and why his voice still hits like a time machine

In July 1985, Olson was honored at a daytime Emmy banquet for his decades of work. Then, just months later, he suffered a stroke and died on October 12, 1985, at 75.

And yet… put on a clip from 1976, and it’s like opening a closet and finding your childhood still hanging there, perfectly pressed. Because Johnny Olson didn’t just announce contestants.

He announced possibility.