BEAVER — All Barbara Ray wanted for her 50th wedding anniversary from husband Wayne was to go on a family vacation to Los Angeles and watch a filming of “The Price is Right.”
Her family friend, Lori Westerlund, who was along for the ride, managed to snag a new car when she was summoned on down to play the game.
Westerlund’s run on the game will air on CBS Channel 7 at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Although she is allowed to say she won a Chevrolet Aveo, she wouldn’t give away how the show ended.
“I guess you’ll just have to watch to see how I did at the Showcase Showdown,” she said.
Longtime romance
Barbara and Wayne Ray met when they were youngsters attending the school in Beaver.
He asked her out in first grade, but she said no — “I told him that I had a different boyfriend,” she said.
Finally in fourth grade, she relented, she said.
“I told my friends go run down the hill and tell him that, yes, I liked him too,” she said.
“So ever since then, we’ve liked each other and been best friends — and we still are.”
He proposed in eighth grade.
“I told him I’d think about it,” she said.
Then, when Barbara was in Kirkland attending Bible school at 18, Wayne went over and got her and brought her home.
The two were married Dec. 3, 1960.
Family and friends
The couple, in a contingent of 18 family and friends — including Westerlund, who is lived in Forks for 40 years and now lives in Seabeck — traveled from Washington to Los Angeles for a trip of a lifetime.
“I always said I didn’t want a big to-do,” Barbara Ray said.
Beth Church, Barbara and Wayne’s daughter, planned the trip for the group and rented several houses within a 15-minute walk of Disneyland.
Church said the studio was smaller than she imagined.
“It only seats about 320 people,” she said.
“Another interesting thing is there are a lot of cameras which kind of block the view — so we are kind of excited about what will be on TV so we can see what was happening better.”
During a commercial break, “The Price is Right” host Drew Carey came into the audience to meet and take pictures with the Rays.
“He was very personable,” Church said.
‘Come on down’
Westerlund said she was either the fifth or sixth person to hear her name coupled with the famous “Come on down” phrase.
“At first I had to look at the paper because they called me Millora Westerlund — my legal name,” she said.
Since she had the goal of making the stage — and the rest of her group wasn’t as interested — she tried to ham it up when producers were interviewing her, she said.
“They said, ‘Millora, is that how you pronounce it?'” she said.
“I said, ‘You can call me manure as long as you call me down,’ just joking around.
“I don’t know at what point they decide, but they didn’t give me a clue at all.”
Once inside the studio and seated, Westerlund started dancing to the pumped up music, too, she said.
The swing of things
The first item she had to bid on was a set of golf clubs.
“I never play golf, so I looked back at Barbara and she told me what to do,” she said.
Then she had to actually use a golf club for the next game.
“I had never used one before — I even had to ask what end to use to hit it,” she said.
“I think Drew Carey was making fun of me in the background, but I couldn’t really hear him with all the music and cameras and such.”
Barbara Ray said the experience fulfilled her dreams.
“It was something I wanted to do my whole life,” she said.
When she was 10 years old, Barbara would visit her grandfather at his home near Bear Creek — the area where the family still lives — and watch a black-and-white version of “The Price is Right.”
“He was blind but he would listen to it, and I just remember him getting so excited for the people who won,” she said.
__________
Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige.dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
