Vanna White Reveals Where Her Relationship with Pat Sajak Stands Following His Wheel of Fortune Exit

The game show fixture opened up about their decades-long friendship ahead of their reunion for ‘Celebrity Wheel of Fortune’ season 5

It’s been nearly a year since Pat Sajak said goodbye to Wheel of Fortune, and Vanna White is opening up about what their off-screen relationship looks like now.

Though Sajak, 78, made his emotional exit from the daily game show in June 2024, White, 68, recently told TV Insider that her former co-host and longtime friend is “still in my life.”

“I still see him! We’re friends,” White said in the interview, published on April 24, adding that the former Wheel of Fortune co-hosts “have dinner” together sometimes.

“Yeah,” she assured fans, “he’s still in my life.”

And when Sajak, who hosted the show for 41 years from 1981 to 2024, reunites with White, who stepped into her now iconic role in 1982, it feels the same as it always has, she told TV Insider.

“It’s like slipping into something very comfortable,” she said. “I mean that in the best possible way. It’s just comfortable.”

Vanna White and Pat Sajak in 2006.M. Phillips/WireImage

But when Sajak first left, White recalled, it wasn’t comfort, but rather melancholy, that she experienced.

“It was sad for me in a way because [at the time] I didn’t know what the future held,” she recalled to TV Insider, adding, “It was ending an unbelievable era!”

As for her current co-host Ryan Seacrest — who took over Sajak’s co-hosting duties following his retirement, making his official Wheel of Fortune debut in September 2024 — White thinks he took the right approach, and it has since paid off.

Vanna White and Pat Sajak in 2020.Ricky Middlesworth/ABC via Getty

“Ryan did his homework. He rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed,” she told TV Insider. “He also said to me, ‘I am not replacing Pat Sajak because no one could – ever. I am just stepping in.’ That made me feel good because, as Ryan said, he’s just stepping in – he’s not trying to prove anything.”

But, for those missing White and Sajak’s dynamic — built over four decades of co-hosting side by side — the duo will once again be reunited on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune, which Sajak has continued hosting despite his retirement from the original game show, TV Insider reports.

Season 5 of Celebrity Wheel of Fortune premieres on April 30.

Last year, after his first couple of weeks behind the wheel, Seacrest, 50, opened up to PEOPLE about how White helped make his transition to co-host as seamless as possible.

“She said, ‘Just go out there and have fun and be yourself,’ ” the star told PEOPLE in September.

Vanna White and Ryan Seacrest in 2024.Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for CBS Media Ventures / Sony

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“The good thing about this game show is that you get to be yourself,” he added at the time. “It has a little looseness to it. It doesn’t have to be so strict and so formatted. It has those moments of real life and humanity.”

Seacrest said that he and White have long had an off-screen repertoire, having “known each other for two decades.” The duo-turned-Wheel of Fortune co-hosts are “friends,” he told PEOPLE, “which has made it really, really nice and comfortable.”

Wheel of Fortune airs Mondays at 7:30 p.m. ET on ABC.