Pat Sajak Shuts Down Booing ‘Wheel Of Fortune’ Audience After “Sweetheart” Couple Misses $40,000 Puzzle: “Hey! They’re Going To France”

The Wheel of Fortune audience sided with a couple competing together during this week’s Sweethearts Special when they missed out on a huge bonus prize.

Spouses Greg Ruvolo and Tom Bayer from Lathrup Village, Mich., became an audience favorite during Tuesday’s (Feb. 13) episode thanks to their stellar puzzle-solving skills, but audience favor was not enough to help them win the Bonus Round.

The couple confidently chose the “Event” category. As they attempted to guess some of the letters in the two-word puzzle, host Pat Sajak called them a “ventriloquist act” because Bayer whispered his guesses to his partner, while Ruvolo parroted them out loud.

They guessed “Yearly Bonnet” and “Yearly Benefit” before running out of time. Unfortunately, the correct answer was “Yearly Banquet.”

“You were right there, you had the right idea,” Sajak said. Even Vanna White appeared disappointed by their loss, saying, “You can’t get much closer than that, I’m sorry. And that ‘Y’ was a good call there, as it turned out.”

Sajak then opened the prize envelope to reveal they could have won an additional $40,000 if they had guessed the puzzle correctly.

The audience booed and groaned in disappointment, to which Sajak responded, “Hey! They’re going to France, and they got fifteen thousand dollars.”

Indeed, the couple went home that evening with $15,350 and a paid tour of France. But they’re not the first ones to recently miss out on the massive prize.

Wheel viewers recently rallied around contestant Megan Carvale because they believed she correctly guessed the answer to a category but was misheard on the show, causing her to miss out on the $40,000 Bonus prize.

Viewers were convinced that she had guessed the correct answer, “Pink Orchid,” right as the countdown music began playing, though it also sounded like she had guessed “Something Orchid.” The moment caused so much controversy that she appeared on Good Morning America soon after to clear the air.

“You know, I wish I said ‘pink,’ because I would have been $40,000 richer,” she explained. “But I said ‘something.’”

Wheel of Fortune airs on weeknights at 7:30/6:30c. Check out their website for your local listings.