Marble Falls High School choir instructor and Oklahoma Christian University alumnus Bryce Gage won $69,000 on the critically-acclaimed game show “Deal or No Deal.”
Gage said he became aware the show was looking for small-town teachers when a friend of his tagged him in a tweet. After he filled out the application, he started a four-month interviewing process before he was cast for the show.
“It’s one of the most extensive interview processes in game shows,” Gage said. “Because, what you eventually find out once you get there, is that the game show is not about the game at all, it is completely about the contestant, their story and their life, and having America fall in love with that family and those people.”
In addition to the length of the interviewing process, applicants had to be on call and ready almost every day to talk with producers or other executive staff members of the show.
“It was tough through the application process,” Gage said. “They kept calling you, asking you questions or would say, ‘Hey, we need to Skype tonight for an hour; you’re going to meet another producer.’”
Once the interview process was over and Gage and his family arrived in Orlando, they began to receive luxuries, which he said come with being a contestant on a game show.
“Once we got to Orlando for the filming and all that, it was incredible,” Gage said. “They literally make you feel like a million bucks, and you are family. They want you to feel like you’re a part of their family. It’s incredible, I would do it all again. The producers, models and Howie are all real people. They’re normal just like us, they engage you and want to know more about you. They would come up and talk to everybody. It truly was like everyone was one big, happy family.”
During the show, Gage accepted the banker’s offer of $69,000. The remaining briefcases on the stage revealed to have: No. 4 with $25,000; No. 15 with a penny; No. 13 with one dollar; and No. 7 with $1,000. The briefcase he chose at the beginning of the show, No. 2, was revealed after he accepted the banker’s offer to have $500,000. Regardless, Gage said his morale was not depleted afterward.
“I came with nothing and walked away with a year’s salary,” Gage said.
In addition to winning $69,000, Gage also competed against Orlando Magic forward Johnathon Isaac in a long-distance shooting contest. The two both made their shots, and Gage walked away with a brand new 55-inch TV, an upgrade from his former 18-inch TV.
Since the show, Gage said the city of Marble Falls has gone out of their way to honor the “hometown hero.”
“Marble Falls named me ‘Mr. Marble Falls,’” Gage said. “There is going to be a ‘Bryce Gage Day,’ I’m giving a concert on a future date called ‘An Evening with Bryce Gage’ and the local burger place, called Bill’s Burgers, named a burger after me called the ‘Mr. Marble Falls Burger.’ And with that, with every one of those burgers sold through 2019, they will donate a dollar to my choir program.”
Gage’s choir program is one of the top programs in the state of Texas. Since beginning his tenure at Marble Falls, he has seen the choir grow from 19 students to 200.
“It’s a very successful program,” Gage said. “We were invited to sing in the White House in 2008, we travel throughout the country and coming up this March, we’re going to Munich, Salzburg and Prague. We produce a full musical every year. This past weekend we just finished with ‘Newsies.’”
The full episode of this “hometown hero” competing is available on YouTube.
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