With 20 seconds on the clock, BYU junior Kyle Gardner sweated it out, weighed his options and blurted, "Mary Tyler Moore!" to win $20,000 on Regis and Kelly Live's Cash Dance Trivia.
The question: What actress did Brooke Shields say will be playing her character's mother on "Lipstick Jungle?"
Gardner pointed out he is not a regular viewer.
"They called me at 5:45 in the morning, and they said Regis was going to call at 7 a.m. and that I should research the previous day's show as much as I could, so I drove home," Gardner said. "My wife and I compiled notes from Wikipedia and whatever we could find. Ten minutes before 7 a.m., I stumbled onto a YouTube video with Brooke Shields doing an interview during the Emmys where I found the answer."
Gardner, 23, a construction management student, grew up in Shreveport, LA as a self-described happy-go-lucky guy.
"I enjoy making people laugh and if it takes a good bum shaking to do it, that's what it will be," Gardner laughed.
He entered the dance competition when he returned home one day to find his wife, Natalia, "bouncing off the walls, all excited, because she'd found the dance competition online and wanted to go on a trip."
They spent the next hour planning and videotaping the dance routine they devised, disturbing the studying of the neighbors below them, but by the time the neighbors came up to ask them to calm down, they had a good clip put together.
Each day throughout September, production staff members chose a dance video sent in by viewers to air for Live's Cash Dance Trivia Contest.
Kyle's video was chosen the last day, Sept. 30, for his high-energy dance moves.
Because the previous day's contestant had not answered the trivia question correctly, the $10,000 had rolled over into the next day's prize.
After Kyle answered the question correctly, winning the $20,000 prize, producers selected him to be in Wednesday's top 10. People had until midnight to vote for their favorites, and Kyle made the top five.
Over the weekend, Regis and Kelly flew the top five to New York to shake their stuff on the live show Monday for the "Quaker Oatmeal Dance Your Heart Out Grand Prize" worth $50,000.
Kyle's diet in the days leading up to the competition consisted almost solely of chocolate covered raisins and gummy worms.
"I like them and they calm your nerves," he said.
Kyle danced to "Everytime We Touch" by Cascada as the audience screamed and cheered.
"I picked it because it's easy to dance to and my wife likes it. I thought, 'If my mind goes blank, I can just make it up,'" Gardner said. "It was nerve racking but once the music started, I stopped thinking and just danced and had fun."
He lost to triple-jointed Daniel Pace, 18, of Worcester, Massachusetts, but he was well-liked and went home with another $5,000, according to Brittany Forgione, spokesperson for the show.
"It was the most amusing and disgusting thing I've seen at the same time," Forgione said of the winner's contortions. "But there is no doubt Kyle was the biggest winner in the top five. He went home with $25,000 and a five-year supply of Quaker Oatmeal."
Walking around New York after the competition, several people stopped him on the street to tell him they thought he should have won.
When asked what he's going to do with the prize money, Gardner joked, "I'm going to buy a bank. I think that's a popular thing to do today. More seriously, probably pay off our car, put a down payment on a house."
But the real question is: what is he going to do with all that oatmeal?
"I only like oatmeal when it's cold, so I'll start warming it up here pretty soon. I have no idea what we're going to do with it all," Gardner said. "Our little girl is only 2 months, but she's going to be eating it her first day of kindergarten."
Copyright Brigham Young University 13 Oct 2008
