Michelle and Justin Hinders are 2012 UD graduates with Nicole Abbate following in 2014. Michelle and Justin Hinders met their freshman year of college.
Justin Hinders is also a Bellbrook native. The Hinders now live in Chicago, where the Abbates are from.
From Flyer family to the Family Feud!
— University of Dayton (@univofdayton) November 12, 2020
You can catch @UDaytonAlumni Michelle Abbate Hinders '12, Justin Hinders '12, Nicole Abbate '14, and their parents Kathy and Vito on @FamilyFeud tonight.
Say hi to @IAmSteveHarvey for us! 👋 pic.twitter.com/oNTaCBllqL
Justin and Michelle Hinders said taping the show was fun, but it’s been even more fun to watch it and have people reach out who have also been watching the show.
“With COVID and everything else this year, it’s been fun to have texts from people saying, oh, I’ve been looking forward to this all day or all week, or this just made my week," Justin Hinders said. “That’s probably the best part of all of this is seeing people smile and be happy from it.”
Michelle Hinders said her family did an audition in Chicago in 2018, were put in a pool of potential families and got a call over the summer to go to Atlanta to do a stage test. Not all the families who are selected to do a stage test get in, she said.
“Luckily, we were one of the first families on, and it just kind of kept rolling from there,” Justin Hinders said.
Justin Hinders said Steve Harvey was a fun person to be with on stage. Harvey uses commercial breaks to do skits or answer questions for the audience, he said. However, they shot multiple episodes in just one day, and spent two days filming the show.
“So he makes it a very friendly environment, he’s a very nice guy, but it’s a very long day,” Justin Hinders said.
But it was a dream come true for Michelle Hinders and Nicole Abbate.
“It was something we were like, oh, that would be cool, if we were on, and we didn’t think it was possible,” Michelle Hinders said.
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