He joined the Army in 1968 and was sent to Vietnam where he joined Armed Forces Radio in Saigon where he began his daily show shouting, “Good morning, Vietnam!”įollowing his discharge, Sajak spent a year at another small radio station in Murray, Kentucky, and then moved to Nashville, where he spent five years at WSM-TV as a staff announcer, talk show host and weatherman. Sajak was born and raised in Chicago, where he broke into broadcasting as a newscaster and announcer at a small radio station. They helped shape what a television personality was, paving the way for so many others.” “My early heroes were people like Arthur Godfrey, Dave Garroway, Steve Allen and, especially, Jack Paar. “I was very lucky in that I always knew that I wanted to be in broadcasting,” says Sajak. In 2011, he was presented with a Daytime Emmy ® Lifetime Achievement Award. In a career spanning five decades, Pat has earned three Emmy ® Awards, a People’s Choice Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The top-ranked syndicated version made its debut in 1983, and in 2021, Celebrity Wheel of Fortune premiered in primetime on ABC. Pat Sajak has been the host of Wheel of Fortune since 1981, when the show aired on network daytime television.
