Pat Sajak turns 80 on Monday, October 26. He was born Patrick Leonard Sajdak that day in 1946 in Chicago, and for 41 years he walked out to the same wheel, the same puzzle board, and the same Vanna White. His final regular episode of Wheel of Fortune aired on June 7, 2024, and Ryan Seacrest took over that fall.
Since then, Sajak has mostly kept out of sight, but the little he has done in retirement says a lot about him, and the most surprising chapter goes all the way back to a radio studio in Saigon.
How Did a Vietnam Army DJ End Up Spinning the Wheel?
Sajak joined the Army in 1968 and, after starting out as a finance clerk, talked his way onto the American Forces Vietnam Network. From October 1968 to December 1969, he opened the 6 a.m. show with “a phrase I shouted virtually every weekday,” as he wrote for the USO in 2014: “Good Morning, Vietnam!” He was quick to credit Adrian Cronauer, “who was famously portrayed by Robin Williams,” as the original. He admitted he felt a little guilty about his “relatively ‘soft’ duty” until soldiers in from the field “thanked us for bringing them a little bit of home.”
Back home, he worked radio in Kentucky and then landed at WSM in Nashville, where the station put him on television as a newsman and weekend weatherman. In 1977, KNBC hired him as the full-time weather reporter in Los Angeles. “When you work in LA, in local TV, in a way, you’re auditioning every night,” he once said, according to Fox News. Merv Griffin was watching. In 1981, he chose Sajak to replace Chuck Woolery on Wheel of Fortune, and when NBC’s Fred Silverman objected that the weatherman was too local, Griffin stopped taping new episodes until he got his way. Sajak started on daytime TV on December 28, 1981, and the nighttime syndicated version followed in September 1983.
That nighttime show, with Vanna White joining him at the board in 1982, became a habit in millions of homes for four decades. So why would he give it up while he was still good at it?
Why Did Pat Sajak Leave ‘Wheel of Fortune’?
He announced it himself on June 12, 2023. “Well, the time has come. I’ve decided that our 41st season, which begins in September, will be my last,” he posted. In a farewell interview with his daughter, Maggie, the show’s social correspondent, he was plain about it. “I’d rather leave a couple of years too early than a couple of years too late,” he said, as reported by Fox News. “Could I still do it? Yeah, I think I could for a while.” His real worry was a different ending. “My goal was not to do the job until I keel over on it,” he told her, according to People.
His last episode drew about 11 million viewers, the show’s best audience in four years. He signed on as a consultant for three years, and he came back for one more season of ABC’s Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, which was billed as his “final spin” and ended in 2025. When Maggie asked what came next, he set a very low bar. “I’m perfectly happy if it just means that I’ll continue with my crossword puzzles and play with grandchildren,” he said.
He didn’t stay quite that quiet, though.
What Is Pat Sajak Doing Now?
Home life is where he has put most of his time. He has been married to photographer Lesly Brown since New Year’s Eve 1989, and they raised two children. Their son, Patrick, finished medical school in 2021. “He is now officially Dr. Sajak, and we’re all thrilled,” the proud father told Wheel viewers at the time, according to People. Maggie, born in 1995, spent years beside her dad as the show’s social correspondent and was the one who sat him down for that farewell interview. Sajak has also served as chairman of the board of trustees at Hillsdale College in Michigan, and he said in 2023 that he would stay in that job after leaving TV.
His sense of humor hasn’t retired either. In June 2026, he posted a tongue-in-cheek video on X, filmed by a pool with palm trees behind him, announcing, “I moved here to Montana, and everything is going just great,” as a cow mooed on cue. People pointed out he was joking. Then on October 8 he made a rare public appearance on Hollywood Boulevard to speak at the Walk of Fame ceremony for his friends in Air Supply. “I do know a little bit about longevity,” he told the crowd, Hello! reported. “I understand the challenge of trying not to wear out your welcome.”
The biggest thing he has done since leaving, though, happened on a stage 2,500 miles from Hollywood, opposite an old Army buddy.
Who Did He Share the Stage With in Hawaii?
Joe Moore was at the American Forces Vietnam Network in Saigon at the same time as Sajak, and the two became close friends. Then Moore went home, and they drifted apart. “Joe left while I was still there in Vietnam and we lost touch for a while,” Sajak told Honolulu station KHON in 2015. Years later, he was watching Hawaii Five-O and spotted Moore in one of the bit parts he used to play on the show. Moore had become one of Hawaii’s best-known TV news anchors, and the two have been pals ever since.
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They started doing plays together in Honolulu in 1993, including The Odd Couple and The Honeymooners. Just as Sajak was preparing to leave Wheel in 2024, the Hawaii Theatre announced their next one. From July 31 to August 10, 2025, Sajak starred in Prescription: Murder, the 1960s stage thriller that introduced Lieutenant Columbo. In a nice twist on the usual casting, the game show host played Dr. Roy Flemming, the smooth psychiatrist who plots to kill his wife, and Moore played the rumpled detective who catches him. It was their ninth production together, and the proceeds went to the nonprofit Hawaii Theatre.
One familiar face flew in to watch. Vanna White, who told TV Insider in 2025 that she and Sajak still have dinner together, saw the show and posted afterward, “Had the pleasure of seeing Pat’s awesome performance on stage in Hawaii last weekend!” More than 55 years after two young soldiers shared a microphone in Saigon, the man who used to shout “Good Morning, Vietnam!” was trading lines with the same friend under the lights. As Sajak once wrote of the troops he played records for, “To this day, my fellow vets from that era repeat those thank-yous.”
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