Patrick Leonard Sajak ( SAY-jak; né Sajdak, born October 26, 1946) is an American 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 currently serves 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 has made various appearances in films, television series, and game shows, such as Airplane II: The Sequel, Days of Our Lives, and Rugrats. He 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.

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.

Early life

Born in Chicago, Illinois, on October 26, 1946, Sajak 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.

Career

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

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 2–5 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.