Pat Sajak He is being interviewed by his daughter to celebrate his final week as host of “Wheel of Fortune.”
On Monday, the game show released the first of four videos of Maggie Sajak asking her father questions about his career, leading up to his final episode of “Wheel of Fortune” on Friday. The farewell episode was taped in April.
“Who’s chopping onions here?” the Instagram caption read. “Today begins the first episode of Maggie’s exclusive 4-part interview series with Pat, Thanks for the Memories, in honor of her dad’s final week as host of ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ You won’t want to miss it: there are some tears and, if you knew Pat, some laughs, too. 41 seasons and 8,000+ episodes just flew by!”
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During the video, Maggie thanked her dad for participating in the interview. Pat joked, “This is between you and ’60 Minutes.'”
“No, I’m honored to be here. My daughter is going to interview me, so don’t put too much pressure on me,” he added.
Maggie Sajak interviewed her father, Pat Sajak, in a four-part interview series leading up to his final episode as host of “Wheel of Fortune.” (Christopher Willard via Getty Images)
Maggie asked her dad how he was feeling about his final week on the “Wheel of Fortune” show, and he replied, “Surprisingly, okay.”
He added, “It was announced a long time ago, almost a year ago, so I’ve had time to get used to it, and it was a bit sad, but I’m enjoying it, fully accepting it and reflecting on the great performance I’ve had.”
Maggie and Pat go on a trip down under memory lane – Back to Pat’s childhood.
Pat said, “I was very light-hearted and made jokes and all that. I wasn’t the class clown, because that would mean I was disruptive or disrespectful. I have a yearbook from my high school days and I looked at the words in it and the word that kept coming up was ‘funny’ and not funny or anything… but ‘funny.'”
Pat Sajak has been the host of “Wheel of Fortune” for 40 years. (Getty Images)
“Obviously I was a funny kid,” he added. Maggie said the word “funny” still resonates with her father.
Sajak said he never dreamed of being a game show host as a child.
“But I did it, and I don’t know why, but I always wanted to be in broadcasting in some capacity,” Sajak said.
The father-daughter duo shed light on their family history and revealed that none of the family members lead a “public life”.
However, Pat’s great-grandmother worked as a horse racing handicapper for a Chicago newspaper.
“She loved radio and television, and when I went to her house, I would often be there because she lived near our house, so instead of watching children’s television or listening to music, she would watch radio talk shows with the broadcasters. But they really influenced me and I grew up in that environment,” Sajak said.
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Pat said his favorite broadcaster was Jack Paar. He hosted the “Tonight Show” for five years in the 1960s, and Pat quickly became a fan.
Pat Sajak was a big fan of broadcaster Jack Paar. (Photo: CBS, Getty Images)
He added, “I would sneak out of bed at night and turn on the TV and watch, and my dad would come in and yell at me, ‘Go!’ And then I got to know him, and he became a real role model and friend to me, and that was a great thing for me.”
Pat and Maggie gave a brief overview of his resume, starting with his first broadcasting job during college in Chicago.
Pat said, “It was a 250-watt foreign language radio station and from midnight to 6 p.m. I broadcast the news in English for five minutes every hour.” After this job he took leave from his broadcasting job in Chicago and served in Vietnam.
He said, “I decided to join the Army. It was around the time of the buildup to the Vietnam War, and I believed if you joined, you would have a better chance of getting into the field you wanted to go to. And my job was Armed Forces Radio.”
Pat Sajak served in the Army during the Vietnam War. (Christopher Willard via Getty Images)
Pat added, “They immediately made me a finance clerk and sent me to Vietnam, but I kept applying for transfers and finally they sent me to Saigon and I was asked to do the morning show.”
“Do you remember the movie ‘Good Morning Vietnam’ with Robin Williams?” Pat asked Maggie.
“I was in that role. I wasn’t the person they pictured, I was after two or three people, but we all had to do the same thing, which was to yell, ‘Good morning, Vietnam!'”
Pat admitted that when he came back to the United States, he “begged” WSM Television in Nashville, Tennessee for a job.
Pat Sajak had to “beg” a television station in Nashville, Tennessee for a job after returning from Vietnam. (Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images)
“One time I went in, probably the 12th time I walked in, a half hour before a staff announcer announced he was retiring, and they said, ‘Well, go down and make a tape for us.’ And I did some reading, and they hired me and I worked in Nashville for five years. I did weather, I did talk shows. I did a lot of things there and learned a lot about television,” he said.
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Pat, 77, is hosting “wheel of Fortune” He has been with the show for over 40 years, and although he announced his retirement from the show last summer, he is currently in his final week on the show.
Pat Sajak surpassed former “The Price Is Right” host Bob Barker to take the title of longest-serving game show host. (Mark Davis)
They have two children, Maggie and a son named Patrick. Maggie recently graduated from law school and also works as an attorney. social media correspondent Patrick is a doctor, while on “Wheel of Fortune”. The two do not have children of their own.
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In September 2022, Pat surpassed former “The Price Is Right” host Bob Barker as the longest-running host of any game show.
Fox News Digital’s Emily Trenham contributed to this report.
