Pat Sajak, the three-time Emmy-winning host of the game show The Wheel of Fortune, announced in a recent interview with ET  that he might be exiting the show soon. The 75-year-old has been the regular host of The Wheel of Fortune since its premiere in 1981. 

Talking about his 40-year-long stint with The Wheel of Fortune, Sajak told ET, “In most television shows by this time, you would have said, ‘That’s probably enough,’ but this show will not die,” adding, “It appears I may go before the show.”

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Who is Pat Sajak? 

Pat Sajak was born Patrick Leonard Sajdak, on October 26, 1948. He graduated from Farragut High School in 1964 and joined Columbia College Chicago after that. 

Sajak’s first break in the world of entertainment came when he emerged as the winner of a contest on WLS radio and became the guest deejay there. Following his graduation from Columbia College Chicago, Sajak was recruited at a local radio station as a newsman. 

His career-defining moment on radio came when he was recruited by the United States Army in 1968 to be the deejay for Armed Forces Radio. Sajak had to travel to Vietnam as part of the gig, and for 14 months he hosted the Dawn Buster radio show, popularised by Adrian Cronauer. 

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Sajak returned from Vietnam in the early 1970s and began deejaying on several local radio stations. One such station, the Nashville-based WSM where Sajak was the afternoon host of a pop music show, gave him his first break on TV in their television vertical WSM-TV. 

That was the beginning of an illustrious career on television which spanned networks like NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox. He started hosting Wheel of Fortune on NBC in 1981 when he was hired by media mogul Merv Griffin against the wishes of the then CEO Chuck Woolery. 

He is married to photographer Lesly Brown-Sajak and the couple has two children.