How This Black Woman Just Made History on ‘The Price Is Right’

It’s not every day a contestant on “The Price Is Right” walks away with a record-breaking amount of money, but that’s exactly what happened to a Black woman from Virginia in a recent episode. And on the off-chance that you missed it, we’ve got all the details on how it went down.

This history-making moment happened for a retired Army veteran named Vanessa McCaskell, who was present in-studio alongside her daughter for a special, Mother’s Day-themed episode. After a while, she got selected to play the “Lion’s Share” game, which, as described by Entertainment Weekly, centers around guessing accurate grocery prices. Specifically, players can “win up to five balls depending on their number of correct guesses. Balls are then dropped into a wind tunnel, which reveals hidden prize amounts.”

The game gets even more testy as the host, now Drew Carey, has to ask the contestants whether or not they want to walk away and settle with their current earnings or let another ball drop and keep building.

However, for McCaskell, walking away without the big bucks just wasn’t in her destiny that day as she decided to keep going forward. Thankfully for her, the money kept racking up with each correct guess until she eventually reached $227,500 in cash. In addition to that, she also walked away with a lavish trip to Morocco, which was valued at $12,650. This, in turn, ultimately brought her total earnings to a whopping—and history-making—$240,150, the most for a single game in the show’s 54-year-long history.

Speaking to USA Today about her shocking win on Monday, McCaskell explained that she was just grateful to play, let alone walk away with a major win. She also shared how the episode was originally recorded in December 2025, despite it not airing until this May.

“It was torture. I was practicing my poker face so I didn’t crack when people asked me what happened,” she said of having to keep quiet for so long. “They’d say, ‘Did you win?’ and I’d say, ‘No.’ It was really, really tough to hold that.”

McCaskell also credited her success in the game to the “softest voice” that kept encouraging her and assured her internally that the balls she’d chosen would be the winning ones she needed.

“I was just so excited to even be in the position to play the game, let alone win,” she said.

She later added, “I know that sounds crazy, but that’s what happened.”

So what does she plan on doing with all her newfound wealth? Well, McCaskell told the outlet that she’d do something nice for her own mother as well as make “some wise investments” with her winnings. She later shared that making the record-breaking amount of money came at the perfect moment, as she’d just celebrated her birthday days before the episode aired.

“I can’t have written this, imagined this any better,” she said.

Watch her exciting ordeal below!