Wilkes and Revell of Canada won bronze and were more than elated with the result considering Wilkes had fractured her skull in a fall during a photo shoot the previous year. The Josephs, who entered the Innsbruck Olympics as the second-ranked American pairs team and did not expect to come close to the medal podium, were happy to finish fourth.

But there was plenty of buzz among the skaters and coaches about whether the West Germans had signed a contract with a professional ice show before the Games. Some were reluctant to speak up for fear that complaining would affect them in judging later. But others, including Peter Dunfield, who coached the Josephs at the time, were upset enough to alert the I.O.C.

“I kept writing to people, so many people, and never got any answers,” Dunfield said.

Eventually an I.O.C. investigation determined that during the Games, the West Germans had signed a contract to perform in Holiday on Ice, a professional ice show. Avery Brundage, then the I.O.C. president, was strictly against athletes being paid. In January 1966, the West Germans returned their medals. Willi Daume, a longtime German sports official later said that had the pair not returned their medals it might have jeopardized Munich’s eventually successful bid for the 1972 Summer Games.

The Canadians were elevated from third place to second, and the Josephs were awarded the bronze medal. Each pair received new medals.

Ronald Joseph, who was in the midst of medical school when he got the bronze medal, said: “It was all very bizarre, but it was good. I thought, ‘There is a God.’ ”

The Josephs recall a subdued medal presentation at the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago. Wilkes and Revell were given their silver medals at the 1967 Canadian national championships. And the two pairs assumed that the matter was settled.

But it was not. Prodded by two German members, the I.O.C. quietly re-awarded the West Germans their silver medals in 1987, 23 years after the Innsbruck Games, at an executive board meeting in Istanbul. The couple was deemed “rehabilitated.”