Tamaqua graduate appears on game show

Higher. Lower. Higher.

Emily Amershek and her mother Melissa share a pastime of hearing those very words on television whenever they had the chance to catch “The Price Is Right” together. On sick or snow days, Emily and Melissa spent a lot of time playing along with Bob Barker and Drew Carey from 2,600 miles away.

“I actually enjoy ‘The Price Is Right,’ ” Melissa said. “As a last-minute Christmas present, my kids and my husband put together a quick trip. They said if we can get tickets, we’re going. She was able to get priority-seat tickets. We literally flew out Monday and came home Wednesday. We made the best of our days … we went to ‘The Price Is Right’ on Tuesday (Jan. 7).”

Off to Los Angeles they went.

Melissa noted that the filming of the show, which aired Thursday, was an all-day affair that took about five hours to produce. Each member of the audience gave about a 10-second interview before it started. What are the odds of getting called down? Apparently, pretty good for Emily, a 2019 Tamaqua graduate.

“I did not rehearse anything,” Emily said. “Even when you shout out to your family back home, I practiced in my head like 30 seconds before I did it, because I never let myself actually imagine that I would get called down. It was crazy.”

It was exciting, yet disappointing as Emily didn’t make it to the showcase. However, her luck wasn’t out, as she helped make a little bit of “Price Is Right” history.

“They call down nine and then obviously only six get up on stage,” Melissa explained. “It stinks that she didn’t win her game. But then all three of them (that didn’t make it) spun $1 on the wheel, and she was lucky enough to get $10,000 on the wheel. It’s just so exciting. In total, she ended up walking away with $11,000, an iPad and an iPhone.”

It’s hard to imagine what was going through Emily’s head as she was on CBS, spinning the wheel of her favorite game show after being plucked from the audience.

“I wasn’t nervous at all,” said Emily. “I just felt like I was playing a game show in the room. I forgot that I was on TV. I didn’t realize that I was on national TV at that moment. Once I realized that afterward, I thought, ‘oh my gosh, I couldn’t remember what I did.’ I just like blacked out up there, what did I say? What did I do?”

The Amersheks agreed that the most challenging part of the experience was not being allowed to share the fun news.

“Thank goodness it was only for a month,” said Melissa. “All we were really allowed to say was look for us in the audience.”

Melissa is a physical therapist, and “The Price Is Right” is often on TV in the homes of her patients. Emily is a pre-med student at the University of Scranton, majoring in philosophy with minors in biology, theology and biochemistry. Emily can’t go see “The Price Is Right” live for 10 years since she was a contestant — but the price to pay was definitely right.

What’s she doing with the money?

“The responsible thing would be to save it for a car,” she said.