Born: October 26, 1946, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Early days. Sajak, son of a Polish-American trucking foreman, was born and raised in Chicago. He attended Goethe Elementary School, as well as Gary Elementary School. Sajak graduated from Farragut High School in 1964 and then went to Columbia College Chicago. Pat Sajak has two brothers.
Career. Sajak won a random 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 AM. In 1968, Sajak joined the U.S. Army, and was sent to Vietnam, where he deejayed on Armed Forces Radio. He finished his military career at the Pentagon in 1970. After his discharge in late 1970, Pat stayed in Washington trying to find radio or TV work. Later in 1977, KNBC-TV in Los Angeles was looking for a weatherman, and spotted Sajak working for NBC affiliate WSM-TV in Nashville. Sajak accepted KNBC's accepted this position. He also had a small role as a Buffalo, New York newscaster in the 1982 spoof film Airplane II: The Sequel. In 1981, Merv Griffin, the designer of Jeopardy! and of Wheel of Fortune, asked Sajak if he would be interested in taking over the duties as host of Wheel of Fortune from Chuck Woolery. Sajak, who already had hosted a few game show pilots, agreed. From 1983 to 1989, he hosted both the daytime (NBC) and nighttime (syndicated) versions of Wheel of Fortune. He still hosts the nighttime version of the show. When his late-night talk show on CBS premiered in January 1989, he left the daytime version of "Wheel," and was replaced by former San Diego Chargers place-kicker Rolf Benirschke. In July 1989, the daytime version moved from NBC to CBS, and production of both versions of the show moved from NBC Studios in Burbank, California to CBS Television City in Hollywood. Since 1995, Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! have been produced at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City. In 1997, as part of an April Fool's joke, Sajak and Alex Trebek switched jobs. Sajak hosted Jeopardy! and became a contestant along with the hostess Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune, which Trebek hosted. On an episode which aired in 2000, Sajak's children Patrick and Maggie delivered the show's closing comments in place of their father and of White. Sajak hosted a late-night talk show on CBS from January 9, 1989 - April 13, 1990 that failed to make ratings headway against Johnny Carson. He has since been a frequent guest host for CNN's Larry King Live when King himself was unable to attend. Sajak is also a regular substitute host for Regis Philbin on the syndicated Live With Regis and Kelly and hosted a program, Pat Sajak Weekend, on the Fox News Channel. He currently hosts The Pat Sajak Baseball Hour, a syndicated radio sports talk show. A conservative Republican Sajak also is an External Director of conservative publishing house Regnery and is on the Board of Trustees at Hillsdale College in southern Michigan. He also has written for Human Events and served on the Board of Directors for the Claremont Institute. Sajak was a major donor to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and sometimes posts political commentary on his official website. One of Sajak's philanthropies is an expansion of the Anne Arundel Medical Center in Annapolis, Maryland; it is named the Sajak Pavilion in honor of his donations. He is also part-owner of Annapolis radio station WNAV 1430, which broadcasts Naval Academy events and other local items of interest. He has donated $100,000 for Hurricane Katrina Relief Fund. Sajak is married to his second wife Lesly Brown, and has a son Patrick and a daughter Maggie. The couple lives in Severna Park, Maryland. Sajak has three Emmys, a Peoples’ Choice Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
References in popular culture Pat Sajak has been referenced and parodied in many TV shows, movies, and animated television series. In one episode of Rugrats, in which Chaz, Chuckie Finster's father, won $10 billion, he (Sajak voiced the character as well) was outside his house holding up a check for that amount of money. Chaz asked, "Where's Vanna?" after he exclaimed who he was. In episode 2 of The Weird Al Show, Al suggested making lima bean cookies in various shapes, one of which is Pat Sajak's head. In the Kevin Smith film Mallrats, Jason Lee's character calls the host of a local dating show "Pat Sajak" as an insult. Sajak was the idol of "Ed Grimley, Jr.," an eccentric character played by Martin Short on SCTV and Saturday Night Live. Short's character famously had a large framed black-and-white photo of Sajak hanging in his apartment. On an episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Pat Sajak was referenced as a part of the feature "Conan's Celebrity Survey." A Sesame Street Muppet was made in his liking named Pat Playjacks, known on SS as the nicest game show host. Tom Hanks played Pat Sajak in a skit on SNL. In Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, Pat Sajak stars in The Frank Gorshin Story on the Eight o'Clock Movie.
This article uses, among others, material from the Wikipedia article "Pat Sajak" licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. :
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With additional information from following sources:
Autobiography
Sajak's article in conservative Jewish World Review
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