Current Jeopardy! champion Amy Schneider has been soaring lately. The Ohio native is on a 33-game winning streak and recently became the first woman on the show to pass the $1 million mark. Schneider has gained quite a following as she takes out her competition, and those fans may have noticed that she always seems to sport a certain accessory. The engineering manager recently shared the sweet reason she wears the pearl necklace on the show.
Amy Schneider spoke to USA TODAY and said the jewelry she’s been seen wearing on Jeopardy! was a gift from her girlfriend Genevieve that she got on the first birthday they spent together as a couple, with Genevieve telling Schneider, “Every lady should have a string of pearls.” Schneider said she wore the pearl necklace for the first taping and liked having a reminder of Genevieve with her through the competition.
It was the first significant time I'd spent apart from her since we'd started dating. And so having that was just a nice, just sort of comforting reminder that, that she was at home waiting for me.
How sweet is that? With the contestants filming multiple episodes per day and having to stay on the top of their mental game the whole time, I’d imagine the Jeopardy! atmosphere is a pretty stressful one. Amy Schneider — who is Jeopardy!’s first out transgender champion — being able to keep the gift from her girlfriend to remind her of the support she has back home must be so comforting.
When Amy Schneider left Ohio to be on Jeopardy!, she and Genevieve may have known it would be their first time apart, but there’s no way they could have expected she’d soon be knocking on the door of second-place all-time for consecutive games won. At 33 wins, Schneider recently passed 2019 champion James Holzhauer’s 32. Matt Amodio’s standing is in trouble, as well, as he won 38 games before being unseated. Schneider still has a ways to go, however, before she reaches the all-time record, held by current Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings with 78 straight wins.
Amy Schneider’s $1,111,800 in regular-season winnings is good for fourth-place all-time behind fellow Jeopardy! legends Matt Amodio, James Holzhauer and Ken Jennings. The fact that Schneider’s impressive streak so closely followed Amodio’s (along with Jonathan Fisher, who unseated Amodio and went on his own 11-game run) has caused fans — and the higher-ups behind the scenes of Jeopardy! — to question if there’s a reason for all the recent success. While fans wondered if the clues were getting easier, executive producer Michael Davies assured viewers it’s not that, and the writers have continued to expand the diversity of the material contestants are expected to know.
Whatever the reasons, Amy Schneider should just keep doing what she’s doing, because it’s working, and if the pearl necklace from her girlfriend makes her feel connected to home enough to keep powering through, all the better. Check your local listings to see when Jeopardy! airs in your market if you’d like to see Schneider in action, and take a look at our 2022 TV Schedule to see what other shows are coming soon.
