What are the odds that a mother and a daughter both play to win the same brand of car as contestants on a game show almost four decades apart?
If you can answer that question, you might be ready to play all the numbers games on “The Price Is Right.”
Comedian and animation writer Jacob Moffat explains this bit of family folklore about his wife and mother-in-law in an Instagram reel he posted on Oct. 6.
Courtesy the Moffat family
Courtesy the Moffat family A pregnant mother and the daughter he was carrying competed on “The Price is Right” 40 years apart.
In 1983, Lana Dalton stepped on stage to play “Hole in One” on “The Price Is Right” with Bob Barker while pregnant with her second child, Emily. Then in 2022, Emily was a contestant on the same show.
Both women had the opportunity to play to win a “brand-new car!” Lana just missed bringing home a Volkswagen Rabbit but Emily won a Volkswagen Taos. TODAY.com chatted with the family to get the inside scoop.
Lana, who was living in Boston with her husband Paul and their toddler at the time, planned to visit her twin sister in California before their second child was born. As part of the trip, Lana requested tickets for the two of them to attend a taping of “The Price Is Right.”
To prepare, Lana tells TODAY.com that she watched the show “faithfully” for three months to learn the ins and outs of each pricing game. Lana won her way to the stage immediately by having the best guess for the price of a trash compactor.
Then, she joined Bob Barker to play the notorious golf “Hole-in-One” game which requires contestants to sink a putt to win.
“Of all the games on the show, I did not want to do that one,” she laughs. “I just wasn’t good at it. And it takes skill. I mean, most of them are just luck.”
Jacob points out that this particular game is notorious in the show’s history because it statistically yielded fewer winners than other games. In later years, contestants were given two tries to sink the putt to win.
In addition to struggling with a skill-based game, Lana had another challenge: she was pregnant. Her center of gravity had changed and she had to lean further over her belly to see the ball. In the end, Lana’s putt was a few inches too short and she did not win the car.
Though her mother had spent months preparing for the pricing games, Emily says that when her turn came, she was completely unprepared.
“I guessed everything wrong,” says Emily, who was invited to attend the show by a friend. She was the first contestant called down from her seat and the last to leave Contestant’s Row. While playing the game “Cover Up,” she eeked her way to victory with a series of lucky guesses.
“My mom studied,” she laughs. “I was on a wing and a prayer.”
Emily managed to be “really, really tight-lipped” until her episode aired, so she was able to see the genuine surprise and delight from her four children, her parents and her friends.
When Lana and Paul (married 50 years this December) traveled from Arizona to visit the Moffats in California, Emily made sure to give Lana a ceremonial ride in the front seat of the car.
As for the car itself … the Moffats laugh that it was a bit of a “lemon.”
“The moment we got the car and we got it home, I started getting letters in the mail from lawyers saying that we’re entitled to compensation,” Jacob says. “So the amount of time we had that car, it was in the shop for 6 months.”
Even so, Emily didn’t want to let the car go, but after three years, the family finally traded the car in for a special edition Disney model.
“I will always have a special place in my heart for that wonderful lemon car,” Emily says. “If I could we have, I would have a little shrine for it. We wouldn’t even drive it.”
But Emily, who once upon a time was the singing voice of Disney’s “Cinderella,” was convinced to make the switch because the new car, a model that her parents had endorsed, played “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” when you start the ignition.
Even though Emily traded her prize car in, she will keep one thing from “The Price Is Right” forever: the license plate holder given to show winners that reads: “I won this car on ‘The Price Is Right.'”
“They give it to you the day that you win it,” Emily shares. Unlike the car, she never plans to let this item go. “My grandchildren’s grandchildren are going to have it!”
The 1983 trash compactor that her mother won, however, was not in the family for long.
Lana says sheepishly, “We brought it home, but we were in an apartment and couldn’t use it. So we sold it to someone who had a house.”
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
