Mack Brown's Daughter Discusses Her Win on Jeopardy!

Katherine Ryan on Alex Trebek, her dad's reaction and how she's spending her winnings

Mack Brown’s daughter, Katherine Ryan, will attempt to defend her title of Jeopardy! champion Monday night, after she won nearly $23,000 in her first appearance on Friday night.

She knows where she’s planning to spend at least some of her winnings—on a trip to the island of Cyprus.

Ryan had planned on taking a research trip there earlier this year, but the trip was scuttled due to the pandemic. Still, her travel plans gave her an unexpected assist on Final Jeopardy.

The answer was: “This nation resisted naval sieges by the Berbers in 1429, the Ottomans in 1565 & Axis WWII air assaults,” and Ryan’s competition incorrectly guessed Cyprus.

“I thought, ‘If they’d been attacked, I think I’d have seen something about it when I was preparing for the trip,” Ryan said. That helped lead her to the correct question: “What is Malta?”

So she’s planning to set aside some of her winnings to finally make her trip to Cyprus once the pandemic is over.

Ryan spoke to us on Monday afternoon, and, while she couldn’t give any spoilers on her fate, she was happy to discuss her experience on Friday’s show.

It was a long time coming. She’s been taking the test for the show for five years—since her daughter was born. She called the decision a product of “sleep deprivation.” She’d never heard anything back until earlier this year, when she got called back for a series of Zoom auditions.

The first one was to make sure she was the one answering the questions on the online tests. After taking a live test via Zoom, she appeared with other prospective contestants.

Finally, she got the call—she was on the show.

As it turned out, she was there for a historic period in the show’s history. She appeared on one of the final show’s in host Alex Trebek’s run as host. He died of pancreatic cancer a short time later.

“We shot it in September,” she said. “We never knew, of course, that it would be among Alex Trebek’s last round of shows. We knew he was ill, of course, but you couldn’t tell from looking at him that he was as ill as he must have been. It was a really great experience and just an honor to be up there with Alex Trebek, because he’s such a legend.”

While Ryan showed off her knowledge in a variety of subjects, the questions that she didn’t get to answer were the ones that haunted her. Chief among them, a question about the home of the Green Bay Packers—Lambeau Field.

Ryan wants to make it clear that she knew Lambeau Field was the answer, she just couldn’t ring in fast enough. Still, it’s a tough break for the daughter of a football coach to miss the Lambeau Field question.

“I also worked in Hollywood for a long time,” she said. “And I wasn’t able to ring in for the Hollywood category. So I heard from my Hollywood friends about that category, and from Dad about Lambeau Field.”

Rewatching it on Friday, she was yelling at the television: “Felicity Huffman! Lambeau Field!”

Her father has been a proud pop, tweeting about her appearances and bragging about her at press conferences.

“He’s been cute,” she said. “He said, ‘I was on Jim Rome, and he asked more about you than about the Miami game.’” He also brought her up, along with Lambeau Field, during his halftime interview during Saturday’s game.