Regis Philbin

I guess I'm afraid to retire because I don't know what I would do. I don't know what my talent is. So I don't know. So maybe I'm afraid to stop, but I've got to stop.

I majored in sociology and never took a single music-related course, much less any kind of class in public speaking - no confidence for it, none - yet I still had a passion for it that burned inside me.

I was a dog man. I love dogs. I had a cat in my later years and fell in love with this little cat, but every kid should have a dog. There's no doubt about it. We've had a lot of fun with them.

When are four women ever happy for another woman getting something they'd love to have? Tell me that.

All my life, all I've wanted to do was a talk show, and I've done it for most of my life. Now to break away from that is kind of a challenge.

All through high school and college, my parents would ask me over and over again, 'What are you going to do with your life? What do you want to be?' Well, in my heart I wanted to be a singer like Bing, but I worried about the reality of that dream. Did I think for one minute that I had the voice to pull it off? Of course not.

Three coaches at Notre Dame made a big difference in my life, not that I played any football when I attended Notre Dame. But Frank Leahy, Ara Parseghian, and Lou Holtz - they all made a difference to me, and I respected them for their attitudes about life and how they handled loss.

I see Kathie Lee. She's not angry about anything. She's having the time of her life, and I really mean that, because I watch her carefully. I wonder, too, how she's feeling, you know, whether she misses - after all, it was 15 years getting up every morning and coming down and sitting there with me and doing the show together.

Anderson Cooper every night dreams about getting my job permanently really.

I did, of course, eventually find my way into television, taking all kinds of jobs, climbing the ranks rung by rung. Anyway, it was several years later, when I was working nationally in Hollywood as the announcer and second banana on ABC-TV's late-night entry, 'The Joey Bishop Show,' that I had my big moment.

I gotta tell you, right at the top of my list would be taking vitamins. I know that over the years doctors have said they're ridiculous and all that. But I started taking my vitamins at an early age. And I take them every day. Every bloody day! So I think that's number one. For whatever reason, I feel active and pretty good at my age.

I had so many local shows before I came back to New York, which is the ideal place to do a national syndicated show. Then I spent five years trying to convince people to give me a shot in the syndication business.