Jeff Commings Wins on "Wheel of Fortune" Appearance

Fortune smiled down as Jeff Commings selected three additional letters and a vowel–P, C, M, and O–to add to the standard R, S, T, L, N, E that Vanna White turned on the instantly-recognizable “Wheel of Fortune” letter board in the bonus round.

“Can he do it? Place is the category,” said Pat Sajak as White hurried to her mark alongside the board. Before she had even gotten there, it was clear Commings knew the answer, breathing a sigh of relief and flashing his signature megawatt smile.

“Picnic pavilion!” Commings shouted confidently before the first second had ticked off the clock.

“Whoa!” Sajak responded, as White and the studio audience cheered and clapped.

In just one guess, Commings, a member of Dolphins of the Desert Masters, had become a "Wheel of Fortune" champion.

The final reveal of the successful game all-but leveled Commings as Sajak opened the golden envelope to show he’d won $50,000.

Added to the value of a trip to Curaçao and additional cash he’d scooped up earlier, Commings walked away with $65,158 in winnings.

Second Spin

This lucrative outing wasn’t Commings’s first gameshow rodeo. In 2019, he’d appeared on “The $100,000 Pyramid,” the fulfillment of a childhood dream that started while watching many gameshows as a kid with his grandmother. She lived to be 105 years old but passed before his debut on “Pyramid.”

Commings made it to the winner’s circle, paired with Rosie O’Donnell, in that escapade. He says the experience was intensely fun, but they didn’t win and he missed out on an additional $50,000 prize. Nevertheless, Commings took home a cool $11,500.

With his appetite for gameshows whetted, Commings considered applying for another one, but the COVID-19 pandemic postponed such plans. Eventually, he applied to be on “Wheel of Fortune” and received a call-back after an audition in 2022.

He didn’t make it on the show then, but he applied again in 2023, and this time, the casting team selected him out of millions of applicants to appear on a show taping in Culver City, California, on March 7, 2024.

An Olympic trials swimmer who’s broken more than 45 USMS records and a handful of Masters world records, Commings is no stranger to fleeting, high-pressure situations. He says his elite swimming background came in handy during the taping.

“It goes by so fast; it was like some swim races,” he says. “Before I was getting myself prepared with a kind of rehearsal, so that was my warm-up. And then you’re standing there when the show actually starts, and that’s the race started. It was thrilling because I was behind at the beginning. I had a lot of luck on my side.”

Taping of the episode was over in a blink, and after watching a few other shows, Commings headed to an evening workout with the West Hollywood Masters group.

“It was so nice to be able to do that," he says. "I was able to swim and be back in my element.”

Being able to decompress from the high-intensity, high-energy-output experience he’d just had–and couldn’t tell another soul about until the show aired–was helpful, he says.

A Focus on Swimming

The weekend before the April 22, 2024, airing of “Wheel,” Commings, 50, was heavily involved with the Arizona Masters State Swimming Championship meet, where he set two new USMS records. Having that focused swimming time kept his mind off his impending television appearance on Monday. 

Since the show aired, Commings’s phone has been buzzing non-stop with calls and texts from friends near and far who unexpectedly encountered a friendly face when tuning in on any other Monday evening. He’d been sworn to secrecy on the whole affair until a few days before the show aired when he finally got an email saying he could post about it on social media.

Even Commings’s husband of 12 years (and partner for eight years prior) Geoff Glaser didn’t know how the game had gone. Commings says watching his husband watch the show and realize what had happened in real time was a special treat.

Commings won’t receive his winnings for a few more months but says he and his husband plan to use some of it to take the trip of a lifetime to Singapore for Masters World Championships and do some additional traveling in Asia.

“We love to travel and there’s just so many things we could do," Commings says. "Luckily, with the winnings we don’t have to say, ‘Oh, it’s not in our budget.’ We can put a finger on the map and say, ‘We’re going here.’”

Despite that opportunity to do something extraordinary, Commings recognizes this exciting episode was as transitory as a 50 freestyle. The day after the show aired, he says “it was back to life as usual. I went to the pool and taught a bunch of swim lessons and I’ll coach my Masters team later. Nothing’s changing in my life.”