Twin Cities sports radio personality “Dark Star,” a fixture on the airwaves of WCCO-AM for 25 years until leaving the station two years ago, was found dead Friday, June 1, in his apartment in Minnetonka. He was 66.

The circumstances of his death were not immediately known, but police said it was not deemed suspicious.

Born George Chapple, the Twin Cities transplant first gained local renown in 1983, when he called into Pioneer Press columnist Joe Soucheray’s KSTP-AM show and accurately predicted that Bud Grant would resign as coach of the Minnesota Vikings the next day.

“We later learned he’d been having drinks with (then-Vikings general manager) Mike Lynn’s brother at the Lafayette Club in Minnetonka,” Soucheray said. “We got terribly impressed that he had the ability to surround himself with the movers and shakers.

“He called the next day and said, ‘See? You can always trust the Dark Man.’ From that moment on, he was always called Dark Star.”

Dark Star was the name of the horse that won the 1953 Kentucky Derby, and Chapple originally acquired the moniker while handicapping horse races in California.

After his 1983 call to KSTP, he soon went to work at the station as a substitute host. He also handicapped horses for the Pioneer Press. In 1986, he landed a job filing horse-racing reports for WCCO from the newly opened Canterbury Downs (now Canterbury Park).

Eventually, he became widely known in Minnesota for his “Sports Night With Dark Star” program, which began airing on WCCO in 1995 in the 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. slot.

He took a buyout from WCCO in 2010 and began working at KFAN-FM.

“He was a complete character,” said WCCO sportscaster Mike Max, who shared a Sunday night roundtable talk show on WUCW-TV with Chapple and Star Tribune sportswriters Sid Hartman and Patrick Reusse.

As a person, Max said, Chapple “was unpredictable. About the time you think you knew what his opinion would be, he’d do a 180 — sometimes by design, just to generate interest.”

“He was the kind that would carry a fistful of cash in his pocket and would tip somebody out of the blue,” Max said. “He just lived that kind of life. He loved big meals with friends.”

Just last week, Chapple invited close friends to a meal at J.D. Hoyt’s Supper Club in downtown Minneapolis. He paid for everything.

“He’d done a lot of things like that, but not that big,” Max said. “I think a lot of us are thinking of that a lot right now.”

Greg Kjos, a cameraman for “The Sports Show” roundtable on WUCW, said regardless of his on-air personality, in person, Chapple “was just one of the nicest guys.”

“I just work on the show, and he made it a point to come by every show and slap me on the back; he made every effort to acknowledge the crew,” Kjos said.

Kjos said Chapple was supposed to do an call-in show Friday afternoon on KFAN, but he didn’t show up.

“Normally, he’s very punctual, so they sent somebody to check on him,” Kjos said. That’s when he was found dead.

“We’ve lost a very good friend and a very good person in the Twin Cities that has entertained a lot of people,” Minnesota Twins manager Ron Gardenhire said in Cleveland before a game with the Indians.

At Canterbury Park in Shakopee, the crowd honored Chapple with a moment of silence before the night’s opening race. Chapple had worked at Canterbury, hosting track programming and serving as a media relations consultant.

Max said Chapple grew up in Ohio and Long Island, N.Y., and was a veteran of the Vietnam War. He moved to the Twin Cities with his parents in 1980. He was twice married but had no children. He lived in the same Minnetonka apartment complex where his mother had lived before she died several years ago, Max said. His father had died previously.

“His family was the people he came in contact with in the press box and the radio show,” Max said.

Tad Vezner can be reached at 651-228-5461.