Laurel native will appear on ‘Wheel of Fortune’
LAUREL — Dane Christiansen thought his father was so good at the T.V. game show Wheel of Fortune, that he should be a contestant.
Curt Christensen, a 1982 Laurel-Concord graduate and the son of Carl and Mildred Christensen, will be featured on the show airing Friday, Nov. 30, at 6:30 p.m. on CBS.
He lives with his wife, June, and they have two sons, Carter, a sophomore at UNL and Dane, a junior at Elkhorn High School. Currently he is employed as a Development Manager with New York Life Insurance.
Curt has watched Wheel of Fortune for 10-15 years and especially enjoys watching the show with his mother, Mildred, at Brookstone in Elkhorn where she resides.
“My mom is very competitive and so much fun to watch the show with and solve the puzzles,” he said.
Christensen said one night his son Dane was watching the show with him and said that he was so awesome at the show he needed to try out. Christensen finally agreed and went to a Wheelmobile when it came to Nebraska. He stood in line and never got an attempt, so he went home and uploaded a video to YouTube in April 2017. He then told his son, “There Dane, I’ve submitted it, case closed.”
In January 2018, Christensen received an email from Wheel of Fortune. The email told him he had been selected for a closed interview at a motel in downtown Omaha.
The experience in itself at the interview process was so much fun, said Christensen. They made it look and feel like a real T.V. show, he said.
What the producers were looking for were people that could smile continually and solve the puzzle, know their alphabet and speak loud enough while still smiling. “It was a lot to remember,” he said.
After the producers watched the people perform, they were given a second part of the interview. They were given 16 puzzles like hangman and were given five minutes to solve them. He gives credit to his mother, Mildred, for doing a great job teaching him his vowels and consonants along with the alphabet.
“The entire experience that day was just fun,” he said.
On Feb. 20 he received a letter congratulating him for making it on the show.
Time passed, and he had to turn down two different times to be on the show. He was worried they wouldn’t call him back. Then he was asked a third time and taping was starting Oct. 11.
According to the Wheel of Fortune website, each year millions of people fill out applications, 10,000 are selected to try out to become a contestant. With all the interest only 600 lucky contestants are selected to step up to the wheel.
Christensen, along with his wife and son Dane, were able to fly to Los Angeles the day before the taping. Their other son Carter, couldn’t go because of college.
While in LA, they rented electric scooters and toured Venice Beach.
The day of the taping, they were shuttled to the studio in Culver City. He went through an alley with Wheel of Fortune on one side and Jeopardy on the other.
Christensen said they taped five to six shows a day. On Oct. 11, they taped five shows. All the people that were picked to be on the five to six shows were put in a room together, where they got to know each other.
Christensen said he was sizing everyone up to see how the competition would be. Soon after they all arrived into the room, Vanna White came to meet them and say ‘hello.’
The producers had already picked who the contestants for each show were to be, but the contestants got to draw what position on the wheel they would stand, and which show they would be on.
Christensen drew the last show. He became part of the audience for the taping of the five preceding shows, and he said that was a lot of fun.
They were always made to feel relaxed and very welcome.
Prior to taping, they were taken through all the legal procedures, taken through scenarios, played the game with a mock Vanna and a mock Pat Sajaks, allowed to spin the wheel and also did a taping of a commercial if local television stations would want to run one.
While he can’t reveal how he did, he is planning a large gathering of friends, family and especially his mother for a watch party on Friday in Elkhorn.
He said he is very excited to watch the game show all week, because the contestants are people he met and enjoyed spending time with. He is most anxious to see what it looks like on Friday when he is on.
“I was most fearful, I would say something that would haunt me for the rest of my life and people would put the saying on a t-shirt,” he said.
Everyone involved with the show made a once in a lifetime experience so fun. He encourages people to try something they want to do but have never tried.
