Pat Sajak ( , born Patrick Leonard ; born October 26, 1946) is an American television personality and game show host. He is best known as the host of the American television game show Wheel of Fortune, a position he has held since 1981. For his work on Wheel, Sajak has received 19 nominations for the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Game Show Host, winning three times. Early life Born in Chicago, Illinois, on October 26, 1946, Sajak graduated from Farragut High School in 1964, then went to Columbia College Chicago while working as a desk clerk at the Palmer House hotel. He served in the U.S. Army as a disc jockey during the Vietnam War for American Forces Vietnam Network. Sajak hosted the same Dawn Buster radio show that Adrian Cronauer had, and for 14 months followed Cronauer's tradition of signing on with "Good Morning Vietnam!" Career Sajak won a 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, he joined the U.S. Army and was sent to Vietnam, where he served as a disc jockey on Armed Forces Radio. On the Military Channel's program, An Officer and a Movie, Sajak admitted to botching President Richard Nixon's 1969 Christmas broadcast to the troops; he accidentally cut the feed off prematurely. Upon realizing the error, Sajak decided it would be best not to resume the feed. In the early 1970s, he DJed for a year for a Murray, Kentucky radio station. Also in the early 1970s, Sajak began DJing at 50,000-watt WSM in Nashville; at the time, WSM was playing pop music during the day, and he was the 2:30–5:00 pm afternoon personality. The radio station's television sister, WSM-TV (now WSMV), brought Sajak on screen, first as a voiceover artist making station identifications and anchoring the five-minute newscasts during NBC's Today Show, then as a weekend and substitute weatherman, where he became acquainted with anchor Dan Miller. In 1977, KNBC-TV in Los Angeles was looking for a weather reporter and spotted Sajak working in Nashville. He accepted KNBC's request for him to be a full-time weather reporter for the station. In 1981, Merv Griffin asked Sajak