Born in Chicago on October 26, 1946, Sajak was also raised there, the son of Joyce Helen (Brandecka) and Leonard Anthony Sajdak, a factory worker, who died when Sajak was young. All of his grandparents were Polish. His mother remarried Walter Backal. 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.\n', '

He served in the US military 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!"\n', '

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, Sajak joined the US 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, he decided it would be best not to resume the feed. In the early 1970s, Sajak DJed for a Murray, Kentucky, radio station for a year. Also in the early 1970s, Sajak began DJ\'ing at 50,000-watt WSM in Nashville; at the time WSM was playing pop music during the day, and he was the 3:00–5:00pm afternoon personality. The radio station\'s television sister, WSM-TV (now WSMV), brought Sajak on screen, first as a voiceover artist doing 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 weatherman, and spotted Sajak working in Nashville. Sajak accepted KNBC\'s request for him to be a full-time weatherman for the station.\n', '

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