Vanna & Pat's Wheel Of Pain!

Game show king & TV queen can’t consummate their decades-long love

For 36 years and more than 7,000 Wheel of Fortune shows, Pat Sajak and Vanna White have kept a sexy secret — they’ve been carrying a torch for each other!

Amazingly, the game show legends pulled back from the brink of a full-blown affair in 1986, four years after first teaming on Wheel.

Earlier that year, Vanna, then 29, was devastated by the plane-crash death of her fiancé, actor John Gibson.

Shortly after, Pat, then 40, split with his first wife, Sherrill, and he and the blond letter-turner began looking at each other with longing.

“From day one, there were sparks between them,” notes an insider. “They developed a close bond very quickly, and they were always right on the edge of taking things further.”