FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Keri-Anne Mowry’s journey from small-town girl in Fairhope to winning contestant on next Wednesday’s “The Price is Right” television show — with side trips to “Baywatch” and as a Playboy model — started in the early 1990s.

“I was just a small-town girl,” Mowry said this week from her home near Los Angeles. “I never had a desire to go to California.”

Mowry’s mother, Crystal Hyde of Robertsdale, who also appears Wednesday in the television show audience sitting next to her daughter, remembers how Mowry’s trip to Hollywood got started.

Two movies were being filmed in Mobile at the time, which was a few years after Mowry graduated from high school, she said.

“Keri-Anne was a very cute girl,” said Hyde, who works as a nurse in Baldwin County. “Gary Busey had a kind of crush on my daughter. He asked her out, but we all went out together for dinner.”

Mowry said she wasn’t very impressed with the much older actor who starred in “Under Siege” with Steven Segall and Tommy Lee Jones.

But that led to Mowry and Hyde meeting people at the other movie, “Rapid Fire,” and having small cameo roles in that film, which was released in 1992.

“A makeup artist (on the set) encouraged me to come out here,” Mowry said. “I planned on visiting for two weeks but ended up staying.”

Mowry said that one thing led to another while she was in California, including work as a model with Hawaiian Tropic and with Playboy magazine. She said one of Playboy magazine publisher Hugh Hefner’s ex-girlfriends approached her one day while she was at a tanning salon.

“She said I was really pretty and should come out to the (Playboy) mansion,” Mowry said. “I was signed as a model the same day.”

Mowry also worked several years as an actress playing a lifeguard on “Baywatch.”

A Wikipedia listing under her maiden name states that Mowry was a “model who worked for Playboy throughout the 1990s.” The Web site lists the various magazine issues she appeared in through 1997.

But these days Mowry is married with two children. Her husband, Brad Alden, is a musician and her children, Bradi-Anne, 12, and Crosby, 7, live in Santa Clarita.

Her mother was visiting them a few weeks ago and got up early to attend the show she has watched for decades.

“I had been bugging her all week,” Hyde said. “But when I got up at 3 a.m., I just wanted to go back to bed. But Keri-Anne said, ‘No Mom, get dressed, we’re going.’”

Hyde said there were less than 30 people when they first got to the CBS studios at 4:30 a.m. but 30 minutes later, 500 people were in line.

“I’m Keri-Anne, and I’m a PTA mom,” Mowry told the CBS staff persons who interviewed her that morning for the show that airs Wednesday. “I know that’s kind of boring.”

Hyde said that Mowry was anything but boring in the way she talked with the staff.

“With her attitude, I knew she was going to be picked,” Hyde said. “And no, she didn’t say anything about her being on ‘Baywatch.’”

Mowry said she and her mother will be seen in the third row behind the contestant stage.

“We were screaming and laughing the whole time, when we didn’t look like deer caught in the headlights,” she said. “They leave you wondering if you’re going to be called. Then all of sudden I’m having an out-of-body experience, and this voice is saying, ‘Keri-Anne Mowry come on down!’”

Mowry said her mother was pushing her and shouting, “That’s you, that’s you.”

“I thought I was going to have a heart attack when her name was called,” Hyde said.

“Out of 320 people, they only pick nine,” Mowry said. “Out of that nine, they only pick six winners. I don’t know what kind of luck I was carrying around that day, but I am thrilled to be a winner.”

A number of conversations with CBS staff this week finally resulted in Mowry being given permission to reveal that she was a winner on the show that airs Wednesday. If she had spoken with the media without that permission, she jeopardized losing any prizes she won, a CBS spokesperson said.

“It’s fine to speak with (them) about the episode, as long as, again, you don’t give away who wins the showcase at the end of the show,” Cindy Marshall, director of media relations for CBS in Los Angeles, said by e-mail this week.

To watch Mowry and her mother on “The Price is Right,” tune in Wednesday, Feb. 13, 10 a.m. to WKRG, TV 5.