After hosting “Wheel of Fortune” for 41 years, Pat Sajak He will make his final turn on Friday.
Last year, the now 77-year-old announced that this would be his final season after being part of more than 8,000 episodes.
“It has been an incredible privilege to be invited into millions of homes night after night, year after year,” Sajak said.
Sajak's turn as an affable host, with Vanna White by his side, made him a TV legend.
'When I first started, I was so green. You made me feel so comfortable, you made me feel so confident, Pat,” White said. 'You made me who I am. Really and truly.'
Sajak also spoke to his daughter Maggie about the show's staying power.
“People come up to us almost every day, sometimes in tears, and say, 'I used to watch the show with my grandmother, or my kids, or my kids learned the alphabet from your show, or my mom came from the Philippines and learned to speak English,” Sajak said. “None of that was our intention, and yet we have become a kind of cohesive bond between people and generations, families and friends, and that is extremely satisfying.”
Sajak will now hand over the baton to Ryan Seacrest.
“It really feels like the end of an era,” says Angelique Jackson, a senior entertainment writer at “Variety,” who says Sajack's legendary career is impossible to replicate.
“This is just not the way TV works anymore. You don't have a game show that is part of everyone's life when they are a child, then they are a parent, then they are a grandparent. This is a total anomaly and will really help Pat to go into the record books.”
Despite the big shoes Seacrest will have to fill when next season starts, White will be right by his side when she returns for another year.
“I can say, along with the rest of America, that it has been a privilege and a pure joy to have Pat and Vanna on our television screens for forty years, making us smile every night and feel right at home with them,” Sea comb wrote on X last year after the announcement. “I can't wait to continue the tradition of spinning the wheel and working with the great Vanna White.”
Jo Ling Kent
