On multiple occasions, Miami hockey sports information director Tim Cary has tweeted about wanting to appear on “Wheel of Fortune,” thinking he could win serious money there.
Promise made, promise delivered, and doesn’t the long-running show’s host know it.
After Cary won $25,420 in cash and prizes during an episode taped in November and aired last Thursday, he rewrote his Twitter bio to read in part, “Pat Sajak once told me that I could stop tweeting.”
Cary rolled on the show, beating his two co-contestants by at least $20,000 apiece, but it wasn’t until the end of a process that took five months that many people knew what had happened.
He applied to go on the show in August, auditioned in September via videoconference, and found out in October that he had made the cut. He headed out to the Sony Pictures Entertainment studios in Culver City, Calif, on a week when Miami was playing away from home, and he missed RedHawks coach Chris Bergeron’s regularly-scheduled Wednesday press conference as a result.
He tweeted on Dec. 12 that his episode of “Wheel of Fortune” would air 10 days later. When it did, his phone notifications spiked.
“I thought I should have some kind of selfie contest or whatever,” Cary said. “I’ve had a couple of people send me random pictures of themselves with their TVs. It’s funny to see where people were watching.”
Thanks to everyone who’s reached out over the last 24 hours! #WheelOfFortune was truly a ‘bucket list’ moment, and I really enjoyed it. Appreciated the friendly show staff. Interested in becoming a contestant? Here’s the link to apply: https://t.co/w9rH3AEWn9
– O O D L U – K! pic.twitter.com/mLCeulDjhc
— Tim Cary (@TimCary) December 23, 2022
Cary had let Bergeron know he’d be taking vacation time, but the Miami coach didn’t know why until Bergeron’s wife found out.
“She told me before our last game against St. Cloud,” Bergeron said, referencing the RedHawks’ most recent series before the holiday break. “I said something to him about it, like, ‘You’re not allowed to tell me how you did, right?’ He goes, ‘No, I have to keep it a secret until Dec. 22 when it airs.’
“My wife is a social media person, I’m not, but it was on there somehow that he’d be on there. It was one of those things. I don’t follow social media, and I’m not on there. It wasn’t talked about in (Miami’s locker) room at all, and I imagine it’s going to be talked about in the room when the guys reconvene here, but I hadn’t heard Word 1 of it.
“Apparently, he told my wife, and that’s why he missed the presser. He doesn’t owe me a reason, but that was the reason he missed it.”
Everything else “Wheel”-related until then, Cary did on his own time. He made a 60-second video introducing himself to the show’s staff, then took part in Zoom auditions that included several would-be contestants competing with each other, just as they might on stage.
“I felt I had done pretty well, but I kind of treated it like a job interview,” Cary said. “I had done a lot of research about what they look for with prospective contestants, trying to really focus on being energetic, enthusiastic, enunciating, all those things.”
Getting onto the show was a lifelong dream for Cary, who remembers playing “Wheel of Fortune” computer games in his elementary school days. It’s much harder mastering the puzzles on stage than it is at home, though, and Cary made sure not to put too much pressure on himself.
That worked out, as the only part of the show where he didn’t succeed was the bonus round.
“Going in, I was aware that it’s not a life-changing amount of money more often than not,” Cary said. “You hope you do well, and I think that for anybody, once you solve the first puzzle, it feels a little better from there.
“You don’t want to go on and not be able to solve a puzzle or be a viral YouTube sensation for saying something stupid. I wanted, when it was over, to hopefully have won something, and that I wasn’t the person that everyone was watching on YouTube the next day.”
That was the last thing on his mind when the episode aired. He watched with family and friends at a Springfield, Ohio, church where he previously worked, and by the time he got back to his car to leave, he had received around 30 well-wishing texts.
“When I put this on social media, I was like, ‘What other things can you put on there that’ll get a 100 percent positive response?’” he said. “Apart from getting married or having a kid, there are very few things where every single person scrolling across your timeline will want to interact with it.
“You build a lot of relationships over time, but it’s the convergence of worlds that has been really cool.”
TODAY IS THE DAY!
I'm going to be a contestant on #WheelOfFortune tonight! Check your local listings for time/station info.
(I've come a long way from growing up with the 1987-era 3-color MS-DOS game and solving fill-in-the-blank puzzles on restaurant napkins with my siblings!) pic.twitter.com/WuQcNQ9YXC
— Tim Cary (@TimCary) December 22, 2022
Even better, Cary will have to figure out what to do with added vacation time. Part of his “Wheel” winnings included a trip to Barbados and a pizza tour of Chicago. He’s yet to figure out when those trips will take place, but added, “The idea of a tropical beach sounds pretty good to my wife.”
Cary’s “Wheel” tweeting appears to be a thing of the past, but his interaction with Sajak might not be. They bantered along with co-host Vanna White at the end of the episode taping, and Cary extended an invitation to take in a RedHawks game.
“That was the part I really enjoyed, at the end of the show, and it goes on for a while,” Cary said. “I was standing there talking to them, and I asked Pat how long he had been a hockey fan, and he got pretty animated about it. A lot of that conversation is a blur, but it’s cool to have that commonality.”
Bergeron could appreciate that, too, after watching a fellow Miami employee shine on national TV.
“Watching Tim on there, he seemed pretty comfortable and a darned good player,” Bergeron said. “He was dominating from the start.
“We’re obviously really excited for him, and to be on the show is one thing, but to go on there and be successful like he was, what a fun time and a cool experience for him.”
