Adriana Xenides

Adriana Xenides
Birth name	Adriana Coutsaimanis
Born	9 January 1956 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Died	7 June 2010 (aged 54) Liverpool, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Show	Wheel of Fortune
Network	Seven Network
Show	Beauty and the Beast
Network	Network Ten
Style	Hostess
Country	Australia

Adriana Xenides (née Coutsaimanis; 9 January 1956 – 7 June 2010) was an Australian television personality. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina to a Greek father and a Spanish mother, she moved to Australia as a child, and became well known for her Guinness World Record-long-running role as the co-host and letter-turner on Wheel of Fortune. She died in 2010 from a ruptured intestine, after several years of ill health.

After moving from Argentina to Adelaide in her teens, Xenides gained a career as a model and was a finalist in the first Mrs South Australia contest in 1978. After being approached by Grundy Television, Xenides joined Ernie Sigley as co-host of Australia's version of Wheel of Fortune in 1981. She remained on the show for 18 years, working with Sigley, John Burgess (between 1984 and 1996), Tony Barber (1996) and Rob Elliott, and for the first 16 of those years – from 1981 to 1996 – she never missed an episode. Xenides formally departed the show in 1999, and was listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest running game show host. Although the record was broken coincidentally by her American counterpart, Vanna White, she still holds the Australian record.

Xenides' later television appearances were as a panelist on the talk show Beauty and the Beast, as a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother Australia in 2002, and a stint with her Wheel of Fortune co-host John Burgess on Burgo's Catch Phrase. In 1985 she presented the multi award-winning promotional film "Adelaide Welcomes the World" produced by Kate Kennedy White and Peter Vaughton for the South Australian Film Corporation.

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