Joe Koff, a Sinclair Broadcast Group television executive who brought professional wrestling’s “Ring of Honor” into countless homes and trained generations in his profession, died of cancer Oct. 15 at Gilchrist Center Towson. The Pikesville resident was 73.

“Joe could read people and cared about them, from the lowest to the highest,” said Robert Weisbord, Sinclair’s chief operating officer. “He was the chief advocate for our employees. He took it upon himself to speak for the village. He was the kind of man who started a meeting by showing pictures of his children.”

Born in the Bronx, New York, he was the son of Dr. Jacob Koff, a family practice physician, and his wife, Natalie Koff. He was a New Rochelle High School graduate and earned a degree in mass communication at the University of Miami.

Koff initially sold radio and television commercials, and after moving to Baltimore in 1989, he served as general manager of WNUV-TV before it was purchased by Sinclair. He remained with Sinclair and mentored its sales force and managers. Colleagues said he “aspired to teach.”

“He showed how to be methodical and how to stretch the mind by teaching more than you did not know,” Weisbord said.

“Joe was the consummate gentleman. Everything about him was genuine,” said Del Park, Sinclair’s president of technology. “He was a wise man. You wanted to engage with him. He was like your older brother.”

Koff led Sinclair’s acquisition of the Ring of Honor professional wrestling league and created broadcasts of the events.

“When you come to a Ring of Honor show, you’re seeing stars and athletes who take their craft very seriously,” Koff told The Baltimore Sun in a 2018 story.

“Last June, the Hunt Valley broadcaster acquired Ring of Honor, a wrestling league with almost no TV presence. Now, Sinclair is using its distribution muscle and marketing savvy to beam the antics of fighters like Grizzly Redwood and the Briscoe Brothers to homes across the country,” noted a 2012 Baltimore Sun story.

“The first thing you saw with Joe was his smile,” Dwight Weems, Sinclair’s corporate director of production operations, said. “He was extremely positive. He had this upbeat attitude and said that every day you get a fresh do-over.”

“He understood and accepted our differences, accepted them and still built a strong team,” Weems said. “As a salesman, he was more a giver than a taker. He was like a circus ringmaster, smiling, wanting you to watch the greatest show on Earth.”

“He was humble, a family man,” said his son, Benjamin Koff. “His family came first. He was a teacher, a mentor. So many salespeople, TV execs, wrestlers — everybody had a story about my father. He was a person who was a master at teaching networking and relationships.”

His sons said when he was in the house, he loved TV. When out of the home, he loved to travel and try restaurants.

“TV was always on at our house. It was his passion. He enjoyed watching it, but he watched it to make it better for everyone,” said another son, Zachary Koff. “Before there was Google and Yelp, he’d ask when traveling, ‘Where’s the best place to eat around here?’ He loved fine dining, and he loved a good, out-of-the-way taco shop just as much.”

“Joe once confided to me that he worked under a bad manager. He told me it challenged him. He did not want to be that guy,” Weems said.

Services will be held at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 20, at Sol Levinson’s Chapel, 8900 Reisterstown Road, Pikesville. Interment is at Beth El Memorial Park in Randallstown.

Survivors include his wife, Lynne Gilbert Koff; two sons, Benjamin Koff, of Gouldsboro, Pennsylvania, and Zachary Koff, of Westfield, New Jersey; a sister, Barbara Perlmutter, of Atlanta, Georgia; and five grandchildren.