Katy woman lives her dream on Jeopardy!

KATY, TX (KTRK) -- Have you ever wondered just what it would take to make it onto a game show? Is it smarts? Personality? Strategy? Maybe a combination of all three?

One Katy woman found out, in order to cross a big item off her bucket-list: Making it on Jeopardy.

Monikka Mann grew up watching Jeopardy with her family.

"Jeopardy is more than just a game show to a lot of people, it's kind of like a family ritual," Mann told abc13.

From there, a love of problem-solving, trivia and competitive board gaming with her own daughters grew into a dream of making it on to the classic game show.

Mann said, "I think if you talk to some of my friends you might say that I'm occasionally maybe a little competitive."

She has tried out more than a handful of times over the past 20 years. When she got the call back from a March in-person try-out in the Galleria telling her she had been chosen for the show, Mann was excited.

"I think that was like one of the best sentences I've ever heard in my entire life," she explained.

Her episode would tape in the spring, so in the meantime she practiced with her Jeopardy pen, the approximate size of the clicker contestants use, in order to prevent premature trigger finger.

"You get locked out for 250 milliseconds which sounds like it's a really small amount of time, but when you're up there and you know that answer and you want that money and you have to wait that 250 milliseconds, it feels like an eternity," Mann said.

When she finally taped, Mann was surrounded by longtime friends and her husband Don, who gave her a little pep talk.

"I just told her to go for it, just to be open-minded about it and at the same time just remember we love you, don't give up, and remember you're on television," he said.

Mann couldn't tell us too much about what went on during her taping, but the Stanford educated engineer says she didn't exactly get the categories she was hoping for.

"I was really hoping for a Taylor Swift category because I'm like I would rock that so hard. I have two teenage daughters so Taylor Swift or a Minecraft category," she said.

As a huge fan of the show, Mann says she's lucky to now be included in the company of Jeopardy contestants. She can't tell us if she won any big money, but said she had always planned to use any winnings to bring her family to a live rocket launch. For now, she's happy she got to show her daughters what it means to be smart, authentic, young women.

"Just because you're girls, you can still be strong and you can still be smart you don't have to be what someone tries to slot you into. You have to be yourself," Mann explained.