First ‘Wheel of Fortune’ $1 Million Winner Says Money ‘Doesn’t Really Go That Far’

Life as Wheel of Fortune’s first million-dollar winner is not as glamorous as fans of the game show might think, according to Michelle Moore, who spun her way to a $1,026,800 payday in 2008.

“Honestly, because I mean, let’s be honest, you don’t get the full amount of money,” Moore told Fox News Digital in a new interview, referring to the taxes applied to such a windfall. “So, a million dollars, it doesn’t really go that far.”

Moore, who competed on the show under the name Michelle Loewenstein, recalled paying off student loans and bills, buying a car, and investing for a future home with her earnings. However, she also had to contend with the high cost of living in California, where she calls home.

“It’s not as much as you would think,” she said. “People do think that it will change your entire life, you’re going to start, like, dripping in gold and, you know, you’re going to drive the fanciest of cars. But I guess it really depends on what your passions and your values are.”

In fact, Moore said winning that much money on Wheel of Fortune “kind of keeps you humble and makes you really value everything that you want to make purchases for.”

Autumn Erhard, Wheel’s second million-dollar winner, spoke along similar lines after her 2013 moment in the spotlight. “I don’t want to end up on one of those shows about how the lottery ruined my life,” she told The Hollywood Reporter in 2014. “We’ve taken a couple of trips, but we are not going out fine dining every night. We’re planning our wedding and trying to keep to the budget that we had before.”

In the new interview, Moore said competing on Wheel of Fortune — after years of trying to get on the show — was “a very surreal, out-of-body experience” but “wonderful” and “incredible.”

She revealed the Wheel team shoots “like, six shows a day,” but, despite that breakneck production schedule, treats contestants like friends. And former host Pat Sajak and continuing cohost Vanna White were “as kind as could be,” she added.

“Vanna came in to check in on us when we were just sitting in the room waiting, and it was just so nice. They’re just very relatable. They don’t seem like celebrities — they were just very warm.”

Now Moore wants to follow in White’s footsteps. “I still am holding out hopes of taking Vanna’s job one day,” she said. “Because that would be fun. I’d love to get dressed up all day and do that.”

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