Background and career
Patrick Leonard Sajak ( SAY-jak; né Sajdak ; born October 26, 1946) is an American retired game show host, television personality, and creative consultant. He is best known as the host of the television game show Wheel of Fortune, a position which he held from 1981 to 2024. Sajak also served as a consultant for the show, and hosted Celebrity Wheel of Fortune until 2025. For his work on Wheel, Sajak has received 19 nominations for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host, winning thrice, and twice nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Game Show, winning in 2024. In 2019, he was recognized by Guinness World Records for having the longest-serving career as a game show host for the same show, surpassing previous record holder Bob Barker. Beyond his game show career, Sajak also hosted a late-night talk show on CBS from 1989 to 1990 and became a frequent guest host for CNN's Larry King Live and the syndicated Live with Regis and Kelly. He has made various appearances in films, television series, and game shows, such as Airplane II: The Sequel, Days of Our Lives, and Rugrats. Sajak has been involved in a variety of other endeavors, including as an external director of conservative publishing house Eagle Publishing and writing for the National Review Online and Ricochet.com. He is also the author of several puzzle games, including "Lucky Letters", developed in collaboration with puzzle developer David L. Hoyt.
Patrick Leonard Sajak was born in Chicago, Illinois, on October 26, 1946. He graduated from Farragut High School in 1964, then went to Columbia College Chicago while working as a desk clerk at The Palmer House Hilton hotel. His Polish-origin surname was originally spelled Sajdak, but he later changed it to Sajak to better reflect its Americanized pronunciation. Sajak served in the U.S. Army as a disc jockey during the Vietnam War for American Forces Vietnam Network. He hosted the same Dawn Buster radio show that Adrian Cronauer did and Sajak followed Cronauer's tradition of signing on with "Good Morning Vietnam!" for 14 months.
Sajak won a contest on WLS radio's Dick Biondi Show to be a guest teen deejay. While at Columbia College Chicago, his broadcasting instructor Al Parker told him that a local radio station (WEDC) was looking for a newsman. Sajak applied for the job and was hired to work from midnight to 6:00 a.m. In 1968, he joined the U.S. Army and was sent to Vietnam, serving as a disc jockey on Armed Forces Radio. On the Military Channel's program, An Officer and a Movie, Sajak admitted to botching President Richard Nixon's 1969 Christmas broadcast to the troops; he accidentally cut the feed off prematurely. Upon realizing the error, Sajak decided it would be best not to resume the feed. In the early 1970s, he DJed for a year at WNBS in Murray, Kentucky. Also in the early 1970s, Sajak began DJing at 50,000-watt WSM in Nashville; at the time, WSM was playing pop music during the day, and he was the 2:30–5:00 pm afternoon personality. The radio station's television sister, WSM-TV (now WSMV), brought Sajak on screen, first as a voiceover artist making station identifications and anchoring the five-minute newscasts during NBC's Today Show, then as a weekend and substitute weatherman, where he became acquainted with anchor Dan Miller. In 1977, KNBC-TV in Los Angeles was looking for a weather reporter and spotted Sajak working in Nashville. He accepted KNBC's request for him to be a full-time weather reporter for the station.
In 1981, Merv Griffin asked Sajak if he would be interested in taking over the duties as host on Wheel of Fortune from Chuck Woolery. However, Fred Silverman, the president and CEO of NBC, rejected his hiring, claiming Sajak was too local, and Griffin responded by imposing a moratorium on new tapings until Sajak was hired. The issue became moot when Silverman was dismissed due to repeated programming failures and replaced by Brandon Tartikoff. Sajak, who had already hosted two game show pilots in 1980, Press Your Luck for Ralph Edwards (no relation to the 1983 CBS game show of the same name) and Puzzlers for Mark Goodson, accepted the position. From 1983 to 1989, Sajak hosted both the daytime (NBC) and syndicated evening versions of Wheel of Fortune; Sajak continued to host the latter version until 2024. When his late-night talk show on CBS premiered in January 1989, Sajak left the daytime version of Wheel and was replaced by former San Diego Chargers place-kicker Rolf Benirschke (who was later replaced by Bob Goen when the daytime show moved to CBS in July of that year). With Sajak returning for his 36th season in 2018–19, he became the longest-running host of any game show, surpassing Bob Barker, who hosted The Price Is Right from 1972 to 2007. From 2020 until his retirement in 2024, Sajak served as the show's consulting producer. In 1997, Sajak pulled an April Fool's Day prank on fans when he and Vanna White were contestants on an episode of Wheel hosted by Alex Trebek. The winnings of both Sajak and White were donated to charity (in this case, the American Cancer Society and the Boy Scouts of America). In return, Sajak hosted a regular episode of Jeopardy! in place of Trebek. Sajak also appeared at the beginning of a 2010 April Fool's episode, along with Jeff Probst and Neil Patrick Harris.
From 2021 to 2025, Sajak hosted alongside White on the primetime spin-off Celebrity Wheel of Fortune for ABC. In September 2021, it was announced that both Sajak and White had signed on to continue as hosts of Wheel of Fortune through the 2023–24 season. On June 12, 2023, Sajak announced that he would retire as host of Wheel of Fortune in 2024, after the conclusion of the show's 41st season. Shortly afterwards, media personality Ryan Seacrest was announced as Sajak's successor. His final episode was taped in April 2024 and aired on June 7, 2024. Seacrest's first episode as host aired on September 9, 2024. In June 2023, Sajak agreed to continue as a show consultant for three years after hosting and said he would continue as chairman of the board of trustees for Hillsdale College. His final episode scored 11.03 million viewers, which was the show's highest ratings in four years. It was announced on July 11, 2024, that Sajak would return as the host of Celebrity Wheel of Fortune for its fifth season. The season premiered in December 2024 with the remaining episodes starting to air on April 30, 2025. Sajak's final episode as host aired on June 10, 2025.
In 1982, Sajak had a small role as a Buffalo, New York newscaster in the comedy film Airplane II: The Sequel. From 1984 to 1989, Sajak appeared on Super Password several times, as well as Password Plus in 1981, shortly before taking on hosting duties on Wheel. Other game shows on which he appeared as a celebrity guest were Dream House, Just Men!, and Match Game-Hollywood Squares Hour. From January 9, 1990, to April 13, 1990, Sajak hosted a short-lived late-night talk show on CBS. Dan Miller, Sajak's old friend and former anchor at WSM-TV in Nashville, joined him as his sidekick. Sajak later became a frequent guest host for CNN's Larry King Live when King was unable to do the show. Sajak became a regular substitute host for Regis Philbin on the syndicated Live with Regis and Kelly. Sajak also hosted Pat Sajak Weekend on Fox News in 2003. From at least 2002, Sajak hosted The Pat Sajak Baseball Hour, a syndicated weekly radio sports talk show that ended in 2006 due to scheduling conflicts. In 1983, Sajak portrayed Kevin Hathaway in the NBC daytime soap opera Days of Our Lives. In 1994, Sajak appeared as himself on the children's cartoon show Rugrats. In 2001, Sajak appeared as himself in the episode "Inner Tube" on the sitcom The King of Queens. Sajak has appeared on episodes of ESPN Radio's The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz, as well as Le Batard's other show, Highly Questionable. In 2021, Sajak voiced a singing bust in the Muppets Haunted Mansion television special for Disney+. Sajak has been a frequent celebrity narrator at Disney's Candlelight Processional, appearing most recently in 2017, 2018, 2019, 2021, and 2024. In the summer of 2025, Sajak starred as Lieutenant Columbo in a stage production of Prescription: Murder, adapted from the pilot episode of the television series Columbo, at the Hawaii Theatre Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, alongside local news anchor Joe Moore.
