By Roberta Clayton
An Emphasis on Learning
Marie Molin is a local teacher, director and co-owner of Magnolia Montessori Academy in Holly Springs. She is justly proud of her three grown sons — Danny, 45, an IT professional; Jeopardy! champion Stephen, 36; and Allan, 29, a loan officer. She moved from New York to Apex in 1996 and also lived in Raleigh before settling in Holly Springs in 2002. Stevie attended Apex Elementary School, was part of the first class to attend Lufkin Road Middle School, and he went on to graduate from Southeast Raleigh High School, participating in the STEM and arts programs offered there. He loved the classes in theater, broadcasting, information technology and programming, and the general milieu.
Says Stevie, “In high school, I was in Japanese Club and Junior Statesmen of America (debate). I founded the Movie Makers’ Club and was among the founding cohort of the Shakespeare Club. I was in ‘The Sound of Music’ and ‘Titus Andronicus’ at the school, and ‘Twelfth Night’ and ‘Romeo & Juliet’ at a Shakespeare camp called Summer Odyssey.”
Next, he earned a degree in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. “In undergrad, I was in the Flicker Film Society, ACE (Association for Campus Entertainment), Political Science Club, the Delta Chi fraternity, and founded the Screenwriters’ Club.” Then he earned a master’s degree in writing from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.
In New York he worked at the Bowery Hotel for a few years. The list of celebrities he met while working in the hospitality industry serves as an example of Stevie’s encyclopedic knowledge of categories. Popular culture is not my category, but how many of these names do you recognize: Elon Musk, Grimes, Azealia Banks, Quentin Tarantino, Jason Segel, Sarah Silverman, Kristen Wiig, Bob Saget, John Stamos, Leonardo DiCaprio, Richard Branson, Kristen Stewart, James Marsden, James Franco, Seth Rogen, Lana Del Rey, A$AP Rocky, Rihanna, Gal Gadot, Reese Witherspoon, David Beckham, Elijah Wood, Flea, Alfonso Cuaron, Edgar Wright, Bella and Gigi Hadid, Steven Tyler, Liv Tyler, Kylie and Kendall Jenner, Kurt Russell, Dakota Johnson, Kate Mara, Jamie Bell, Michael B. Jordan, Julian Casablancas, Aziz Ansari, Nick Kroll, Jason Mantzoukas, Amy Poehler, Jessica Simpson, Zayn Malik, Jesse Eisenberg, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Jack Black, Anne Hathaway, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Scout Willis, and others.
Stevie has done writing for two films and for a television pilot. He has written and performed music and plays, and is also running a Haitian pop-up restaurant called Yotte’s, having learned Haitian cooking from his grandparents. He even launched a clothing line last year called Montauk Vice.
A Trivia Whiz
At four years of age, Stevie began watching Jeopardy! and answering along with the contestants. “The first answer I remember getting as a kid was the $600 clue in Double Jeopardy! on November 1, 1994, in the Business & Industry category. The clue was, ‘In 1984, Hallmark bought Binney & Smith, makers of this brand of crayons.’ I said, ‘Binney & Smith.’ Although I didn’t answer in the form of a question, my mom and grandma were shocked and impressed.”
“For the next thirty years, my grandma would constantly say, ‘You need to go on Jeopardy!’ When I got the call that I was going on, she was the second person I called, after my mom. I said, ‘Hi Mommy Yotte! You can finally stop telling me I need to go on Jeopardy! because I’m going on Jeopardy!’ Although she’s been in the US for almost sixty years, she still has some linguistic quirks from English being her third language. She responded with enthusiasm, ‘I’m so pride of you!’”
Stevie’s lifelong interest in trivia and games has been the best preparation for becoming a contestant. There are those who study and cram and lay out grids to learn facts from many fields, but Stevie has kept so busy working that he just gathered facts as he went along. “I didn’t really do a whole lot of prep.” His jobs kept him working six or seven days most weeks, but trivia was a natural draw. “The most prominent phone trivia game was HQ Trivia. There were others, including The Q, Beat the Q (not the same game), and Swagbucks Live (which has smaller prizes but is the last one still around). Between them, I won around $5,000 over the course of about a year.”
Jeopardy! Applicant
There is an online “anytime test” anyone can take once per year. The applicant does not see the results, but there is a cutoff of 35 correct answers out of 50 questions to pass. Stevie first took the test in February of 2018. “I didn’t know whether to expect a follow-up. In February of 2024, when I took it for the final time, I noticed for the first time that there’s a message at the end instructing you to add two email addresses to your contacts so that any email from the show doesn’t get filtered to spam or deprioritized. I thought, ‘Huh. Never noticed that before. Wouldn’t it be crazy if they emailed me before?’ They HAD emailed me, in 2021. I replied to the email asking if I could still audition based on my 2021 test or if I’d have to keep trying. After a couple of days of stress and the tiniest kernel of hope, they said I could.”
“I’m glad it worked out the way it did, because in the intervening years, I had moved to Montauk, which I love, and met a community of people who changed my life and helped me become a better version of myself. I wouldn’t be working on the things I’m working on or living the life I live now if it had gone differently.”
Jeopardy! Contestant
Because Stevie kept applying, in June of 2024 he was chosen for a final audition pool, and in mid-August he was invited to California. Each person who goes out pays for his own transportation and lodging, and can bring along three guests. How exciting it must have been to have his mom, brother Allan, and Allen’s wife, Tish, to cheer him on. He brought a few changes of clothing and was also able to use items from the costume department. After his selection as a contestant, there was a two-month delay until the programs were filmed in October. That return trip did involve travel and lodging provided by the show.
There was a very strict rule that he would not divulge anything about the outcome of each day’s games. Some people tried to trick him, so he had to be very cool and reveal nothing, either by word or by facial expression. There have been cheating schemes in the past, but all quiz shows now engage a compliance company to ensure that there are no irregularities, scandals or rigged answers.
Five episodes are filmed in one day, following two days of rehearsals and practice with the buzzer. The group was cordial and helped each other, which was important once they were on the set together. Waiting in the green room was actually tedious because no phones or books or materials of any kind are allowed there. “The ‘digital natives’ of Gen Z and Gen Alpha are not as comfortable without their devices,” says Stevie, who is a Millennial. With a dozen people waiting there, time seemed to crawl.
The very famous format is to reformulate an answer and reply with the appropriate question. Each contestant is allowed one “mulligan” or do-over. In his second game, the host, Ken Jennings, simply said, “Watch your phrasing,” when Stevie slipped up. Because there had been multiple preparation sessions, everyone had received advice and understood the rules.
Jeopardy! Champion
Thus it is that our man, now living in Montauk, New York, but raised in Holly Springs, eventually ended up playing on four episodes of Jeopardy! His winnings came to just under $40,000, subject to California non-resident taxes. Perhaps you happened to watch when the shows, filmed in October, were broadcast on December 3, 4, and 5 of 2024, a Tuesday through Thursday. And you might also have seen him Tuesday, January 14, 2025, when he was invited back to play in a Champions Wild Card Tournament, winning an additional $5,000. All the filming was done at Sony Pictures Studio, next to Wheel of Fortune in Culver City, California.
Where was Stevie on those broadcast dates? He was keeping his cool, not revealing anything about the results, and attending multiple watch parties. In Montauk, they moved to a different venue each night, helping to safeguard the knowledge of his triumph. Other watch parties were held by friends in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Seattle, Chicago, Austin, Miami, Los Angeles, and Holly Springs. How many fans watched the show with proud mama Marie? “Oh my gosh, lots!”
Stevie shares, “One last fun fact: At the Champions Wild Card tournament, I met fellow champions Joey De Sena and Marko Saric from the Triangle area, and I’ve joined their trivia team until I go back to Montauk for the season. We play on Tuesdays at Sharky’s in Raleigh.” In case you do happen to catch him up north, “I’d also like to mention my Haitian food popup series, called Yotte’s after my grandma. We sell Haitian patties at Latin Night at Tauk in Montauk, and we have events planned with other restaurants.”
Marie and Yotte are some of his biggest fans. Marie says, “My parents expected that all of my siblings and I be successful and I expect the same of my children.” She was clever enough to tune in the evening broadcast of Jeopardy! while I was in their home. It was fun to guess correctly on some of the questions and to watch Stevie in action answering others.
Incidentally, Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings is booked as keynote speaker for the Mensa Annual Gathering in Chicago this July. When this writer registered in January, Ken’s presentation was already sold out. But not to worry. I may never meet Ken Jennings, but I’ve had a personal chat with Jeopardy! champion Stevie Ruiz. Above his beaming smile is a head full of facts, along with plans and events and people. In the category of Jeopardy! Champions, the clue is: Favorite of Yotte, Marie, and Roberta. (Buzzz.) Who is Stephen Ruiz?
