A Look Back At Wheel Of Fortune’s Latest Millionaire
Many TV shows are taking advantage of social media, and Wheel of Fortune is no exception.
On September 30, 2025, Christina Derevjanik won $1 million in Wheel of Fortune’s bonus round. By successfully solving the puzzle PACK OF COYOTES, she became the show’s fourth non-celebrity million dollar winner.
Michelle Loewenstein won the $1 million prize in 2008, which made her the first contestant to ever do so on Wheel of Fortune. Autumn Erhard and Sarah Manchester did the same in 2013 and 2014 respectively, which was followed by a long dry spell. Over the next decade and change, seven civilian contestants landed on the million dollar envelope in the bonus round, but none of them could solve the final puzzle. Upon solving her bonus puzzle, Derevjanik broke an 11 year long stretch with no million dollar winners on syndicated Wheel.
During Wheel of Fortune’s annual summer break, the show posted several quiz questions on social media. That included a question asking who the show’s biggest winner is, which teased Derevjanik’s episode months before it aired.
Many people saw this quiz on Wheel’s Instagram story over the summer. The same question was posted to (and has since been deleted from) YouTube. Some fans thought that this quiz being posted was a mistake, and others thought it was an intentional preview of things to come.
The three wrong answers were other huge winners from the show’s history. Erhard and Loewenstein both won the $1 million prize, and Trammell is the only contestant who’s ever won a house on Wheel of Fortune. But Wheel fans were intrigued by the correct answer, because it was a contestant that hadn’t been seen on the show yet. Game shows traditionally tape their episodes months before they’re scheduled to air. We saw Derevjanik win Wheel’s top prize in September, but the episode was filmed all the way back in May. Thanks to this quiz many fans knew that something huge was going to happen in Wheel of Fortune’s upcoming season.
As the episode’s air date drew closer, Wheel managed to become even less subtle about the incoming million dollar win. In the week leading up to Derevjanik’s episode, nearly all of the show’s videos and social media posts incorporated the word “million.” It appeared in the titles of their YouTube videos, as well as their captions on Instagram and TikTok. One of their Instagram posts was even a cipher that reads ONE IN A MILLION when decoded.
At this point, it became obvious that it was no longer a question of if someone was going to win a million dollars. Now it was just a matter of when. The quiz that was posted over the summer felt like it might have been a mistake, but these hints were clearly intentional.
In addition to the $1 million from the bonus round, Derevjanik also won $35,155 during the main game. She joins Loewenstein, Erhard, and Manchester as the only people to win the top prize on the syndicated version of Wheel, as well as Melissa Joan Hart, who did the same on Celebrity Wheel of Fortune in 2021. Derevjannik is also the first contestant to win $1 million on Wheel during Ryan Seacrest’s tenure as host.
