“Your mullet is trending on Twitter,” is not something you hear every day. But for Jared Jank it was just one of the many unexpected things he experienced during a New Year’s Eve that was made up of several once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
The story began last summer when a Minnesota Lottery Facebook livestream caught Jared’s attention. “They were doing a Pictionary game that I thought was fun. It turned out to be things in New York. I made my guesses and then forgot about it.”
Months later, Jared was enjoying a whirlwind trip to New York, being a VIP guest at an exclusive New Year’s Eve gala in Times Square, being part of ABC’s live broadcast of “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest 2023” and having a one-in-five chance to win $1 million. Not your average New Year’s Eve.
Jared didn’t take home the $1 million, but he came home with something even better: a fiancée. Right before he found out that he was one of five finalists in the Powerball First Millionaire of the Year promotion he proposed to Alicia Baillie.
“I had no idea,” Alicia recalled. “When we were at the party, all of a sudden, they started playing this song by Morgan Wallen. We are big Morgan Wallen fans, and I was thrown off because they had been playing classical music. I turned and looked at Jared and he looked at me and said, ‘Come on, let’s dance,’ No one else was getting up to go and dance and I asked, ‘Are you sure we can?’ We start dancing. Jared started getting a little emotional. It still wasn’t clicking with me. I thought he was just emotional because we were there. He’s trying to get his words out and it finally clicked. ‘Oh, okay, this is happening.’ He didn’t even ask me. He got down one knee. I just kept shaking my head yes.”
Alicia said that Jared told her later that he thought she knew. “Everyone knew besides me,” she said. The Powerball people knew. Everybody at that party knew. I called my mom right after. She was happy for me, but she was like ‘I knew.’ It was funny because before the trip people were being kind of weird. I thought maybe I was talking about the trip too much and they were annoyed. After the trip they said they had such a hard time keeping quiet.”
In case you are wondering, Jared decided to grow his internet famous hairdo at the start of the pandemic. The production crew loved the look so much they asked him if he would give the mullet a shake for the camera. Being the fun, good sport that he is, Jared gave them a mullet shake worthy of a shampoo commercial.
Congratulations Alicia and Jared from all of us at the Minnesota Lottery. We wish you a lifetime of happiness.
For more information on the “POWERBALL First Millionaire of the Year” promotion, please visit www.powerballrockineve.com.
For the latest Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve news, exclusive content and more, follow NYRE on social (Facebook | Twitter | Instagram), on ABC sites (Facebook | Twitter | Instagram), online at newyearsrockineve.com and join the conversation by using the official hashtag for the show, #RockinEve.