By Bowen West, UM News Service
MISSOULA – Allison McJannet had been watching “The Price Is Right” for as long as she could remember. So had her mother, Jenny McJannet. But for years, it was the kind of thing families say when they are half joking and half dreaming: “Someday, maybe we’ll go. Someday, maybe we’ll try.”
Then one day, they did.
What started as a bucket-list detour turned into a nearly yearlong secret, a whirlwind day in a television studio and, eventually, a national TV payoff for the University of Montana alumna and current UM graphic designer.
On the June 30 episode of “The Price Is Right,” McJannet won $36,674 in cash and prizes, a haul that included a Martha Stewart ring, cash from Punch-a-Bunch and a showcase packed with a Las Vegas trip, a driving experience, cabaret tickets, a Vespa scooter and a Volkswagen Taos SUV.
“We’ve just been watching ‘The Price Is Right’ for both of our entire lives,” McJannet said. “And just on a whim last year, I thought, you know, if we’re ever going to do it, let’s just jump on it.”
So they did. McJannet said she saw that tickets were open, decided to make the trip to Glendale, California, and packed Griz shirts for the occasion.
“I was like, let’s just go down to California and have fun and do it,” she said. “Book the trip and, you know, got some Griz T-shirts ready to go.”
Her mother, Jenny McJannet, a UM alumna who graduated in 1996 with a degree in political science, said the whole idea felt less like a plan and more like a leap of faith.
“It’s a real bucket-list kind of thing,” she said.
The two had watched the show for years, which helped calm some nerves.
“We know all the games pretty well,” Jenny McJannet said. “Nothing was going to be a real shock or like, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to play this.’”
Still, nothing quite prepares you for walking into the studio and hearing your name called.
Allison McJannet was the first contestant selected. She raced to the front of the stage, she said, “hooting and hollering and yelling and clapping and getting super excited,” emulating the contestants she’d seen on TV.
That initial burst of adrenaline never really let up.
“It’s just so wild,” McJannet said. “We came into the studio without thinking we were just going to have a good time, but now it’s rolling, right? So just being on stage and thinking by myself, wait, you got to focus, you got to pay attention.”
That focus paid off in the end. McJannet won her way onto contestants’ row, then into the game itself, where she played Punch-a-Bunch. She said she and her mother had talked for years about how people always seem to punch random spots on the board. Their strategy was to go clockwise and hit each corner.
“Everybody punches in random spots,” McJannet said. “We always thought, go clockwise and hit each corner. We thought that’s where the money was going to be.”
The strategy produced some edge-of-your-seat suspense. McJannet said the first punch turned up $2,500, the second $1,000, then she gave up $250 and eventually settled on $500 from the game. That was enough to keep the momentum going as she moved on to spin the wheel and then into the showcase.
From the audience side, Jenny McJannet could barely believe the pace of it.
“Once she got down to contestants’ row and then was the first bidder and then the first person on stage to play a game, I’m like, ‘Wow, you’re going to spin the wheel then,’” she said. “This could go all the way.”
Both women said the atmosphere in line before taping made the experience even more memorable. They arrived early and spent hours waiting before filming began.
“You have to be there by 9:30. They don’t start filming until, what was it, about 2 in the afternoon,” Jenny McJannet said. “So it’s a lot of hours that you’re waiting. And you just meet a lot of people around you.”
That included fans from all over the country.
“There was a group in front of us from South Dakota, another group from Virginia,” she said. “So it’s just a lot of fun to meet the people.”
Allison McJannet said the show’s contestant line and backstage process added to the dreamlike quality of the day.
“You get to meet some of the production staff behind the scenes and the instructions on how to be hyped up,” she said. “It’s just such a whirlwind.”
Then came the hardest part: silence.
The McJannets taped the episode on Aug. 8, 2025, but the episode didn’t air until June 30, leaving them under strict nondisclosure rules for almost a year.
“We were totally on pins and needles, just crossing our fingers and hoping we’d see it,” Allison McJannet said.
Jenny McJannet said the delay made the whole thing even more unreal.
“As the year goes on, you keep thinking it’s never going to show up on the calendar,” she said. “You’re super excited after you filmed and we knew what happened, but then you can’t tell anybody what happened, and you just have to keep it quiet.”
That meant learning how to dodge questions without giving anything away.
“We get pretty skilled at turning people away and saying, ‘I can’t tell you,’” Allison McJannet said. She added with a laugh that “The Price Is Right” had effectively placed her on a kind of game-show no-fly list.
“If you’re on ‘The Price Is Right,’ you can’t be on for the next 10 years,” she said. “We keep joking that it feels like I’m on a no-fly list, but it’s like a no-10-year ‘Price Is Right’ list.”
When the episode finally aired, the reaction came fast. She got messages from coworkers and friends congratulating her on the win.
Even the smallest encounters turned into celebrations.
“We went out to dinner after it aired,” she said, “and even the servers were bringing other servers down.”
For the mother-daughter duo, the appeal went beyond the prizes. It becomes the friends made in the studio that they still text to this day.
“It really does become that ‘Price Is Right’ family,” Allison McJannet said. “Which is so cheesy. It’s so cheesy, but it really is true.”
Jenny McJannet agreed.
“This was going to be a once in a lifetime memory,” she said.
The episode can be viewed on Paramount Plus.