This howling KC principal won ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ New host Ryan Seacrest is now a fan
.JPG "Troy Sawyer, principal of Korte Elementary in Independence, won $86,850 in cash and a trip to the British Virgin Islands on “Wheel of Fortune.” He became an audience favorite when he let out a Korte coyote howl on the show.")
For two months, bound by a legal document to stay silent, Troy Sawyer couldn’t tell anyone that he won “Wheel of Fortune.”
The Independence grade school principal taped the show at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California in early November. But it didn’t air until Jan. 1, the first episode of the new year.
He met Ryan Seacrest, the show’s new host. Met Vanna White, veteran letter-turner. And, big “Wheel” fan that he is, Sawyer easily solved the bonus round puzzle, winning cash and prizes worth $86,850 — an “epic game,” by the show’s standards.
The phrase he guessed in the bonus round — “brace yourself” — eerily foreshadowed the big surprise he got at the watch party he hosted last week.
The last few days have been a bit “surreal,” the 40-year-old principal of Korte Elementary told The Star.
A producer walked up to him after the show and told him, “You’re going to be a meme.”
“And my anxiety immediately set in,” Sawyer said. “Why am I going to be a meme?”
He worried that he had said “something stupid” during the taping. But it wasn’t that.
It was the howl.
Sawyer wowed the audience when he let out a loud, enthusiastic Korte coyote howl on the show, a rallying cry students at his school hear every day during morning announcements.
The audience stunned him by howling when he solved his first puzzle. Seacrest encouraged him to bay back, setting Sawyer up for a howling good time.
Sawyer — “Dr. Sawyer” to his 470-some students — explained to producers how the school has used board games, video game activities and an arcade to improve student behavior, encourage attendance and teach kids how to be gracious winners and losers.
The Korte kids are currently in their “game show era,” inspired by Sawyer’s participation on “Wheel of Fortune.”
Sawyer has learned how to use his own interest in pop culture — and the fact that he looks younger than he is — to connect with the kids, some of whom might “say I’m mean, but every kid will say I’m fair,” he said.
“We always talk about how I don’t expect you to be perfect, I expect you to be better.”
After Sawyer won, Seacrest told the ebullient educator: “I’m glad you’re in charge of the next generation.”
Sawyer had met Seacrest once before when he tried out for “American Idol.” He auditioned for the singing competition a whopping 13 times.
“At one point I think I had the most auditions of anyone,” Sawyer said.
Now that he knows what winning feels like, he’s got his sights set on another TV show: “Big Brother” on CBS. He dreamed as a little boy of one day basking in the celebrity spotlight. He wanted to be that rare star “that everybody likes.”
He’s got the attention now.
“Apparently there’s a page on Twitter — Hot Guys on Wheel of Fortune. I made that,” he laughed.
He said “Idol” producers told him he had singing talent but no “story” — one of those dramatic, walk-through-fire tales of adversity that go over big on reality TV.
He has one of those stories now, after a lump on the right side of his neck turned out in recent years to be Hodgkin lymphoma, a rare cancer in the lymphatic system. “It was a sudden reminder that life can be short,” he said.
The game show with the wheel turned out to be more his speed. Since the episode aired last week, “I’ve had people reach out saying, ‘You’re living my dream. How did you do it?’”
Like any other contestant he applied online. “You have to submit a picture, but then you can submit a video, and my recommendation is do the video because they have thousands of people and there are going to be duds out there that they want to avoid,” he said.
“Pick the video option and show your personality. Let them be excited.”
He auditioned for the show in November 2023. “When they interviewed me the big push was they were looking for the best contestants for Pat’s last season,” he said, referencing long-time host Pat Sajak, who retired in June.
When Sawyer didn’t hear anything he figured he hadn’t made the cut. But then he got an email from the show in October inviting him to California with less than two weeks’ notice.
He had a glitzy, Vegas-style blue suit ready to wear, but contestants were told not to wear anything shiny. Producers liked his bedazzled blue Converse, though, and let him wear them.
He didn’t recognize White the first time she walked onto the set, no makeup, a towel around her hair, to meet the contestants and wish them luck. “Not how I always see Vanna,” he said. “She did not have to do that. She was so sweet. And Ryan was so genuine.”
In its recap, TV Insider wrote that Sawyer “dominated the episode, especially in the Express Round, where he picked up $16,300 and a trip to the British Virgin Islands worth $11,500.
“He then swept the Triple Toss-Up round, answering all three puzzles correctly. And he finished the game off by nailing the final puzzle in Round 4, giving him a huge winning total of $46,850” — 10 times more than the second-place finisher.
He chose the “phrase” category in the bonus round.
TV Insider described the last round like this.
“He then selected C, H, M, and A as his additional letters, giving him a two-word puzzle that read, “_ R A C E / _ _ _ R S E L _.
“As the 10-second timer began, Sawyer initially looked confused as he guessed, ‘Trace Yourself.’ However, he then turned to Seacrest and gave the correct answer, ‘Brace Yourself,’ adding, ‘I knew the whole time’ and letting out another howl.”
After Seacrest opened the prize envelope, the announcer said: “Troy, here’s something you can really howl about: $40,000!”
Sawyer hoped to win money because, he said, he didn’t need a car. When he saw the $40,000 card, he immediately thought: “I just won the equivalent of one year’s salary.”
Without thinking he kissed his boyfriend, Paul Murphy, one of two friends standing on stage with him during the bonus round.
And the second he kissed Murphy, “I knew that was going to be life-changing,” he said.
He had introduced Murphy as his boyfriend. But at school? Sawyer doesn’t talk about his private life.
Dr. Sawyer and Troy, until last week, were two separate people.
Now, suddenly, his students will also know him as Troy, whose boyfriend of three years is a nurse practitioner at St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City.
“In that moment I didn’t think about Dr. Sawyer. I thought about Troy,” he said. “I couldn’t help but think, ‘Will this change the way certain families perceive me?’”
Later, he said, he found out his was only the third same-sex kiss on “Wheel of Fortune.”
He and Murphy came home from a European vacation a day early to watch the show in Kansas City. Sawyer invited his mom, friends, co-workers, former colleagues and students to a watch party the night of Jan. 1 at Pinches Tacos in Westport.
He wore the glittery blue jacket he couldn’t wear on the show.
And then, after the show aired, Murphy got down on one knee and surprised Sawyer with a proposal.
The trip he won to the British Virgin Islands? That might become their destination wedding.
The money he won? They’re thinking about buying a renovated school bus to live in so they can convert their home into a Nickelodeon-themed Airbnb.
With schools closed this week because of Kansas City’s recent snow storm, Sawyer hasn’t had a chance to talk to students who saw the show.
He knows their parents have seen it, though, because many have congratulated him on social media.
He said some might believe talking about homosexuality with grade-schoolers is inappropriate, and he will respect that.
“I’m not going to go to school and put rainbow flags everywhere,” he said. “But I do feel comfortable if they ask about me wearing a ring on my finger that wasn’t there before, or they ask about the man I hugged ...
“And I will put a picture of myself and Paul on my desk. I don’t want to continue to hide myself.”
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