HEARTBREAKING: Inside Wheel of Fortune Vanna White’s tragic heartbreak that made her ‘Fall To Her Knees’

Vanna White has been a co-host of Wheel of Fortune since four decades (Image: Disney via Getty Images)

Wheel of Fortune star Vanna White has been a primary fixture on the game show for almost four decades. She told PEOPLE Magazine that the show’s creator was impressed with her chemistry with host Pat Sajak, landing her the life-changing gig.

“He said it was like brotherly and sisterly chemistry,” White said in the interview, adding that in the 37 years they’ve been on air together, she and Sajak have “never had a single fight in real life.”

While White has a commendable career, her personal life has not always been so perfect. On May 17, 1986, White lost her then-fiancé, John Gibson, in a plane crash. It took just that one moment to make White’s world come crashing down.

“The second I heard about it, I fell to my knees. It was just devastating,” White recalled.

Vanna White said she and Pat Sajak never fought in the 37 years of the show (Image: Getty)

Wheel of Fortune fans helped her get through that difficult time, she said. “I heard from so many people who had shared the same experience of losing someone instantly in an accident, and that really helped me. I didn’t feel like I was alone. Because when something like that happens, you immediately think you’re the only one,” she added.

She married restaurateur George Santo Pietro in 1990, and was pregnant with their first child in 1992. However, a week after announcing her pregnancy, she miscarried.

“I so wanted to be pregnant and have a baby, so then when I finally got pregnant, I wanted to tell the world immediately,” she told PEOPLE Magazine.

“Obviously I lost the baby, which was devastating after announcing it. The good news is I was able to get pregnant again and had two beautiful, healthy children. … But losing a child — there’s nothing good about that,” she added.

White’s support system—made of her family, friends and fans, helped her cope with the miscarriage. She also turned to her faith.

“I’m a Christian and have always had my own personal relationship with God,” she said. “I don’t preach about it, because everyone’s entitled to their own beliefs. But I pray. I pray every day.”

Though White and Santo Pietro went their own separate ways in 2002, White is now in a live-in relationship with John Donaldson, who she met through a mutual friend.

“He lets me be me, I let him be him. There is no drama,” she said of her relationship with Donaldson.