Childs family to appear on Family Feud

By Ali Holcomb

The Childs family of Netawaka and Holton will appear on the TV game show Family Feud next week.

“My son-in-law always says, ‘Put the Childs girls in front of a microphone and watch out,’” said Beth (Childs) Pagel. “You’ll never know what will happen, and we proved it.”

Beth, her daughter, Brandy (Pagel) Watkins; her nieces April (Grace) Zeller and Amanda (Williams) Kennedy; and her great-niece, Bree Williams; were selected this spring among hundreds of families throughout the country to compete on the game show, which is hosted by comedian Steve Harvey.  

While the episode featuring the family airs nationally, but not locally (see more details at the end of the article), Monday, the family’s journey on the show actually began in January.

April’s sister, Heather Rayls, posted information about Family Feud auditions in Kansas City to family members on Facebook and wrote “Who’s in?”

“She’s always looking for opportunities for our family to do something fun,” April said. 

Beth, Brandy, April, Amanda and Bree were the first five family members to respond to the post with a ‘yes.’

The women were familiar with the game show, and noted that during the annual Childs Christmas celebration last year, the family played the board game version of Family Feud.

In order to be invited to Kansas City to try out for the show, the women put together and submitted a short audition video on Jan. 31.

“We made the video at Amanda and Luke Kennedy’s farm in front of their cow pasture,” Beth said. “In the video, I’m roping the girls to take them to Family Feud. I think we were all a bit more reserved, but as the process went on, we came out of our shell.”

The family was asked to audition in Kansas City on Feb. 27 where the women played a mock game and had to fill out several pages of forms about themselves so the producers could get a sense of their personality.

“We sat in a huge room with many other families, and we had no idea when our name was going to be called,” April said. “When our name was called to play the mock game, they were watching us the entire time to see how entertaining we were, if we smiling and having a good time. We really didn’t know what to expect after that.”

After the family finished the mock game, a producer handed them a slip of paper, which meant they had been selected to extend the audition process. The women were taken to a room with a cameraman and a producer to conduct one-on-one interviews, as well as a group interview.

In the group interview, Brandy and Amanda ended up performing a scene from the movie “Top Gun” where the characters Goose and Maverick perform “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.”

“We had no idea what we were doing, and all we see is the cameraman back there laughing holding the camera,” Brandy said. 

“When we ran out of that room, we were mortified because we didn’t know what was going to happen, but the cameraman said to us ‘We’ll see you guys in Atlanta,’” April said.

Several weeks after the audition, the family received a postcard saying that the show had their family on file and could be called anytime to fly to Atlanta to compete on the show. 

On April 14, Beth received a call from a representative from Family Feud wondering why she hadn’t responded to the show’s emails requesting the family to appear on the show. 

“She said, ‘We don’t normally make a call because we just assume you’re not interested, but we really want you girls,’” Beth said. 

It turns out that the producers did not have Beth’s correct email address, and the producers wanted the family in Atlanta May 20 - 24 for the taping.

“They told us at the time that, even though they are flying us out there, we still might not make it on the show,” Brandy said, noting they had to audition again once they arrived in Atlanta.  “We didn’t know when, or if, we would be called to compete. It was a lot of waiting.”

During the days of taping, the family would arrive at 11:30 a.m. or noon and didn’t back to their hotel at 11 p.m. 

On Monday of that week, their named was called. 

“There was this sense of relief,” Beth said. “This is real.” 

While the women can’t reveal too many details about the competition itself, they said Family Feud host Steve Harvey was just as funny as he appears on television.

“He was hilarious and such an entertainer,” Brandy said. “He tapes three to six shows a day. He works hard.”

The women talked to Harvey about rural life in Kansas, such as the new Walmart in Holton and new stoplight.

“The way we came across, they loved us,” Beth said. “Most of the show is about entertaining. They don’t care how you play the game. They want you to entertain.”

The women said they had a lot of fun with Harvey, and they hope that comes across in the episode. 

“They tape your show for an hour and a half and then they edit it down to 22 minutes,” Brandy said. “So we were really good at socializing and entertaining, but the actual game itself is what the public sees. We don’t know how they edited us.”

The Family Feud format is set up so that if a family wins a game against another family, they receive prize money and move on and play another family for additional money. 

A family can play up to five games, and if they do, and win, the family also wins a car. 

The Childs family likes to go camping and boating, and the women told Harvey that if they won any prize money, they would use it make one of their boats or purchase a boat that is handicap accessible for Heather Rayls and her husband, Joe, who are both restricted to wheelchairs.

“We were so glad that Heather was able to go to the taping because she was the whole reason we auditioned,” Brandy said. 

Heather, as well as nine other members of the Childs family, took time off work and attended the taping to cheer on the women.

“It truly was a once in a lifetime experience. These are memories I will be talking about with my grandchildren,” Brandy said. “Our husbands, family, friends and community have been so supportive. When this whole process is done, I’m going to miss the calls, the texts and how much we have laughed at each other.”

Episode will not appear locally for several weeks

Nationally, the episode featuring the Childs family will air on some TV stations at 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 26. It will be the second episode for those stations that run two episodes back to back, the women said. 

Since Topeka is a smaller market, KTKA channel 49 only runs one episode each evening, and on Monday, the channel is only running the first episode, which does not feature the Childs family.

The episode featuring the family will appear locally on KTKA about six weeks later, it was reported. 

The women said they may travel to a larger market like Kansas City on Monday to view the show and record it to have a “watch party” with their extended family.

“We’re just hoping that if somebody happens to see it on Monday in a larger market, they’ll just keep the results to themselves so that the excitement isn’t ruined for everyone else who has to watch it later locally,” April said. 

More details about when the episode is televised locally will appear in a future edition of The Holton Recorder.