Both Martindale and his wife Sandy have fond memories of Elvis Presley: He interviewed the singer several times and she was Elvis' girlfriend for six years. "My mother came with us on our first dates," chuckles Sandy. "I was so embarrassed I cried."
Sandy's romance with the King began at age 14, when Elvis was bowled over by the photo, which he spotted hanging in the office of her dad, a Los Angeles nightclub owner.
"He called me to go out, but I had to tell him I had school the next day", she recalls.
"The next night Mom drove me to the club to meet him. Elvis had a date with a gorgeous actress that night and there I was, with my little ponytail. He was 24. He held my hand, kissed me on the cheek and I was a goner."
They were an item, on and off, for the next six years --- right up until he married Priscilla.
"I danced in six of his movies because I was going with him," she says. "In Viva Las Vegas that's me with Ann-Margaret and Elvis dancing at the roulette table."
Even after Elvis married, he and Sandy stayed friends. She says she was devastated the last time she saw him, back-stage at one if his last Las Vegas concerts.
"I was shocked at how ill, how bloated he had become," she says. "He had been a slim, gorgeous Adonis in years past. Wink and I were so concerned we invited him to come stay with us until he get his health back. We wanted to nurse him back to health.
"I remember to this day the sad, wan smile he gave us as he shook his head. Within weeks he was dead."