On Christmas Day, Brian Kelley met his family in Little Rock, Arkansas to watch a familiar scene on television.

But this time it was different: the Dallas resident saw himself appearing on the screen, simple yet iconic Wheel of Fortune Name tag pinned to his chest, a big smile on his face.

“It was just very surreal,” Kelley said in an interview Friday. “I would say by Christmas Day when the episode aired it still didn’t seem real.”

Kelley’s debut on the long-running television game show had been years in the making. One of the 42-year-old’s earliest memories is watching Wheel of Fortune with his grandparents, and he had spent more than a decade running as a candidate.

Kelley said he remembers telling his fiancé Sean that the interviews this year “just felt different.”

He was then asked to confirm the dates he could travel to California. After flying to Los Angeles in September and arriving at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City to tape the show, Kelley and the other contestants were sworn to secrecy and told not to talk about how they fared at the game be.

The contestants met before their time in the spotlight, and among them Kelley met Damon Sayles, a man from Plano who had traveled at the same time to compete in the competition.

On filming days, the crew shoots six episodes in a single day. Sayles’ group was the third to leave and Kelley’s group was the sixth.

Kelley, Sayles and the other participants stayed in touch through a group text message. For many, watching the episodes aired was the first time they saw how their competitors had performed.

The group chat is full of congratulatory messages and lively conversations. While much of the chatter focuses on this wheel of fortune, it occasionally intrudes into their private lives. One of the participants recently shared that she found out she was pregnant.

“There are a handful of them that I definitely consider friends now,” Kelley said. “Damon is someone I’ll probably stay in touch with forever.”

Kelley and Sayles appeared on the game show’s first season with new host Ryan Seacrest, who took over from Pat Sajak. The Dallas-area duo said they were thrilled to meet both Seacrest and the show’s longtime co-host Vanna White.

Kelley said his nerves disappeared once he stood on the stage he shared with Seacrest and White. He said he was “laser focused” on not being a “dumbass” while the national television camera was trained on him.

Wheel of Fortune is one of the most popular entertainment shows ever. According to Variety, the show averaged 7.99 million viewers per night in its premiere month this year – the highest premiere month viewership the show has seen in three years.

The looks at him came with “celebrity treatment,” Kelley said. His years of preparation resulted in a profit of more than $24,000.

“We did the Metroplex proud,” said Sayles, whose group won nearly $70,000 in cash and prizes.

Kelley kept his results secret from his family. “I wanted it to be a surprise,” he said.

Since his episode aired on Christmas Day, he decided against having a big watch party, but said watching it with family for the first time made the experience even more special.

To celebrate, Kelley’s family cut a custom-made cake. The vanilla cake with vanilla frosting — his favorite — was designed to resemble the game show’s iconic spinning wheel, complete with colorful wedges representing dollar amounts and penalties.

“It’s hard to top this next Christmas,” Kelley said. “Now you ask yourself: ‘What are we going to do next year?’”