Here is what I received back from both inquiries:
The Columbus Library informed me that Wheel of Fortune was at the 1983 Ohio State Fair, according to the book: A History of the Ohio State Fair by C. La Von Shook. They attached some scanned pages from the book, where the author only mentions the show\'s 1983 visit in a brief sentence from the 1997 Fair section of the book, when the show also visited. They also searched our Columbus News Index database for 1983 and were not able to find any mention of the show at the Fair that year.
A staffer from the Ohio State Fair supplied me with this great response (sarcasm):
\"I simply did a web search through Google and put in “wheel of fortune at ohio state fair”.
This is what I found.
August 1983:
- On August 29, four TV stations in Ohio (including WEWS in Cleveland, WKEF in Dayton, and possibly WKBW in Buffalo) debut Wheel with a special week of episodes taped at the Ohio State Fair earlier in the month. According to Pat Sajak during some 1997 tapings at the same location, these were the first nighttime tapings (episode numbers unknown) but did not go over too well due to at least some contestants having no idea how to play the game.\"
Now I\'ve got a request into WBNS and we\'ll see if there\'s anyone at the station who thinks this 30 year old topic warrants a response.