A hospital pledge takes Menlo Park fan to The Price is Right studio audience

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Menlo Park resident and The Price is Right contestant Andreas Judas with host Drew Carey during filming. Courtesy The Price is Right.

Sitting in The Price is Right studio, Menlo Park resident Andreas Judas told the person sitting next to him that he was nervous. Before he knew it, he was on the stage.

Judas, 56, went to The Price is Right’s set in Glendale for the taping this August, after years of watching the long-running game show that pulls contestants at random from the studio audience. As a child, he’d watch it on sick days, and when he was in the hospital as an adult in 2001, he got back into the habit. Being able to watch the show live in the studio audience was a sign that his health finally had turned a corner, he said.

On his last stay in the hospital, as Judas was watching the show, he said that he and his wife Jennifer made a promise to each other.

“My wife was always saying to me, ‘When you get better, we’re gonna go down there and do it,’” Judas said. “And so when they opened the new studio, and I started feeling better, I said, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’”

After recovering from complications following his second heart transplant in July 2022, Judas said that getting to go to the show felt like a milestone.

Sitting in the studio, Judas struggled to hear the audience member’s names being called over the enthusiastic cheers of the crowd. Instead, he saw a cue card go up with his name on it, and barely heard the show’s iconic invitation to “Come on down!” from host Drew Carey.

Menlo Park resident and The Price is Right contestant Andreas Judas during filming. Courtesy The Price is Right.

“It’s kind of surreal,” Judas said. “Everything happens so quickly. On TV, everything is so clear, but you know, when you’re sitting there, there’s like three cameras between the audience and the actual stage.”

Judas looked back to his wife and could hardly see her past the slew of cameras.

The show, spanning 52 seasons, centers around contestants guessing the prices of various items in order to win prizes. He played a game called Swap Meet, where a contestant is shown a prize, then three others, and have to match one of the three to the unknown price of the first one.

After months of keeping quiet about the show with his friends and family, Judas’s episode is finally airing on Monday, Oct. 16, at 10 a.m. on CBS.

“It’s definitely an experience,” Judas said. “You’re so excited and everything for so long. It’s actually a little exhausting. But also, you know, in a good way.”