When Bob Barker, host of the long-running game show “The Price is Right,” announced on Oct. 31 his plan to retire, Randi Hugunin and her family could not have known that in a few months they would be making memories that will last them a lifetime.
Following Barker’s announcement, Hugunin, of Burlington, called her grandmother, Nelle (Joan) Hegwald of Waverly and told her they were going to Los Angeles.
“I told her about Bob and she said ‘OK,’” Hugunin said. “Over the next few months, I really started planning the trip from hotel, ‘Price is Right’ tickets, to just about anything in L.A. to do.”
On Jan. 10, the family went to book their flight. By then, the group then consisted of Hugunin; her husband, Jerame Hugunin; Hegwald; Hugunin’s aunt, Debra Huntsman; and Hugunin’s cousin, Darin Huntsman.
“After getting plane tickets, we went to Flying J travel to eat,” Hugunin said. “My cousin, grandma and I got to laughing so hard that Debbie told us to quit acting like a bunch of ‘hicks from the sticks.’ So, there we had it. Our first T-shirt design.”
After the family ate, they headed to Rasor Apparel in Emporia. They had three shirts made for the show. Mike Reilly, of Rasor Apparel, said the company doesn’t usually do smaller orders, but that was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for the family, he said.
The first T-shirt said “Hicks from the Sticks” and on the back was an outhouse. The second was a caution orange, had a tornado on the front with the words beside it reading “Blew in From Kansas” and the third one was lime green and on the front and had Kansas and California connected by the yellow brick road and on the back it read “The heck with Oz, we came to see Bob!”
“So now we had the plans, all we need is our ‘Price is Right’ tickets,” Hugunin said.
Hugunin was set to fulfill her grandmother’s dream of getting on the show. She sent in a request for her tickets. She sent 15 requests for tickets and hoped for the best. But, on April 2, she received bad news. All the tickets for the week she requested were gone. After waiting another week, she sent an e-mail to CBS and hoped for a miracle.
“The morning of the 12th, my phone rang and it was the head of guest relations for ‘The Price is Right,’” she said.
After that conversation, Hugunin was promised five tickets for the May 1 taping. The next Monday, April 16, was Hugunin’s grandmother’s birthday. Hugunin ended up getting four of her envelopes back with 19 tickets in addition to the five that were promised to her.
The morning of April 29, the family was set to fly to Los Angeles. It was Hegwald’s first flight. When they arrived in Los Angeles, they found that people already were in line for the Monday taping. After Hugunin’s husband and cousin waited in line all night to get tickets, the family’s dream was about to come true. After waiting more the next day, the family was interviewed and ended up getting in for the taping.
“It was a lot different than I had expected,” Hugunin said. “A lot smaller and not as fancy. They started the show with the first four contestants, one game, and then to commercial, after that they called ‘Nelle Hegwald, come on down. You’re the next contestant on The Price is Right.’ I couldn’t even speak.”
Hegwald ended up getting on stage, fulfilling her dream of being on the show.
“I can’t even tell you the feeling,” Hugunin said. “Wow, what an amazing experience.”
Hugunin said all the effort to fulfill her grandmother’s dream was worth it.
“It was a dream of a lifetime for grandma and I am glad I shared it with her,” she said. “This is something I will be talking about when I am also 74 with my grandchildren. Once again, wow, what an amazing trip ... my memories and pictures are more than she could have ever won on The Price is Right.”