In 1981, Merv Griffin was watching the Los Angeles local news when he noticed a Band-Aid over the weatherman’s right eye. The next time the camera cut back to the forecaster, the Band-Aid was over his left eye, which greatly amused the Wheel of Fortune creator.
That weatherman was a young Pat Sajak, and his prank led to a phone call that changed his life. “Merv called me, and he said, ‘You ever think about doing game shows?’” Sajak recalled in a 2007 interview with the Television Academy Foundation.
Sajak, now 77, has had this silly sense of humor since childhood, when the self-described “intelligent” class clown would entertain teachers by handing in two sets of tests, a real one and a version with funny answers.
Born in Chicago on October 26, 1946 (a Scorpio), Patrick Leonard Sajdak (he later dropped the d) was drawn to entertainment from a young age. He didn’t rise early to watch cartoons. Instead, he snuck out of bed at night to see Jack Paar on The Tonight Show. But show business was a vastly different world from Sajak’s working-class upbringing. His Polish-American parents worked in factories. “I don’t know how influential they were in forming what I did,” Sajak has said. “But they let me do what I wanted, never questioned my career.”
James Atoa/Everett Collection
As a teen, he won a guest DJ spot on Chicago’s Dick Biondi Show. He then attended Columbia College Chicago, where an instructor told him about a local radio station looking for a newsman. It turned out to be a foreign-language station based in a deserted Cadillac showroom, and during overnight Spanish programming, Sajak, who didn’t speak a lick of Spanish, would read the news in English.
He left college to join the Army in 1968 in what he called “a fit of patriotism,” but even in Vietnam, Sajak found his way to the broadcast booth. For 15 months on Armed Forces Radio he greeted the troops with the call of “Good morning, Vietnam!,” the famous phrase he inherited from DJ Adrian Cronauer, on whom the 1987 Robin Williams movie was based.
Returning Stateside, Sajak eventually landed in Nashville, where he met his first wife, Sherrill, who had a young son from a previous relationship, and worked as a DJ at WSM radio. By 1977 he’d been promoted to weatherman at the network’s TV affiliate, and his talent and humor had earned him a spot at KNBC-TV in Los Angeles, where he delivered the gag-filled weather reports that tickled Merv Griffin.
Sajak replaced Chuck Woolery as Wheel of Fortune host in 1981, and with cohost Vanna White, helped turn the show from a fading third in the daytime ratings into the most watched syndicated evening program in the U.S., winning three Daytime Emmy Awards for hosting along the way.
(Credit: ABC/Ricky Middlesworth)
Still, the success took a toll on his personal life. He divorced in 1986, and Sajak swore off marriage. Of being a stepdad, he told The New York Times in 1988, “It was a great experience, but I don’t think I’d want to do it again.”
He soon changed his mind. Through mutual friends, Sajak met photographer and former Playboy model Lesly Brown, and after she jetted to Mexico with a guy who’d picked her when she’d appeared on an episode of The Dating Game, Sajak realized he wanted more than their platonic friendship. “I knew she was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with,” he later told People.
The couple married in 1989 and have two children: Patrick, now 33 and a doctor, and Maggie, 29, who serves as Wheel’s social correspondent. Sajak’s love for his family is evident. He gushed with pride when announcing his son’s medical school graduation and got visibly choked up introducing Maggie as White’s temporary replacement in 2023.
Related‘Wheel of Fortune’: A Pat Sajak & Vanna White Photo Album
It was Wheel’s loyal viewers who experienced big emotions last year, however, when Sajak announced his retirement. He’ll turn the reins over to new host Ryan Seacrest in the fall.
“I joke that I haven’t had a career, I just had one long job,” Sajak told the Television Academy, and he looks back at that long-ago phone call from Griffin in wonder. “If I made a list of the 100 things I wanted to do in broadcasting, game show host might’ve been 99th,” he said. “It’s OK to have a goal, but you never know what doors are going to open.”
This is an excerpt from TV Guide Magazine’s Wheel of Fortune: Farewell, Pat Sajak issue. For more inside scoop on the long-running game show and Pat’s final episode, pick up a copy of the issue available on newsstands and for order online at WheelofFortuneMag.com.
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