The crack at $1 million? Face time with the show’s 26 glamorous supermodels? Or the personal thank-you from the U.S. commander in chief himself?

The episode that features all of the above will air Monday at 8 p.m. on KING 5.

Army Capt. Joseph Kobes was blown away when host Howie Mandel segued to a taped greeting from President Bush, who thanked him for his three tours in Iraq and wished him good luck in the game show.

“He was definitely speechless, which is rare for him,” Ken Kobes said of his son.

The elder Kobes said Friday that he’s under orders from NBC not to divulge his son’s winnings from the show, taped last month at a studio in Culver City, Calif.

Kobes, 29, is a transportation officer in school at Fort Lee, Va. A few months back, he drove six hours to an open “Deal or No Deal” tryout in Philadelphia and got called back for a second audition. A month after that, the producers called again. He’d made the final cut.

The show put up his parents, Ken and Susan; his girlfriend; and his three brothers in a nice hotel for four days during the taping last month. The family enjoyed the impromptu reunion.

It was a nice departure from an intense past few years for the younger Kobes, a Sumner High School graduate who double-majored in nuclear physics and pre-med at West Point, Class of 2001.

He was in Iraq from March 2004 to March 2005. He led a transportation platoon in Iraq and volunteered for two other assignments from November 2006 to July 2007, a White House spokesman said Friday.

Kobes was twice awarded the Bronze Star for valor and has a Purple Heart for shrapnel wounds he suffered when his truck was bombed in 2004, his father said.

And what about that taped game show message from the president?

Kobes had an inkling something might be up, his father said, when he got a call from his assignment officer telling him his next job was on hold because the White House had been making inquiries about him.

Kobes thought maybe he was up for a White House fellowship or one of the other plum assignments there for military officers.

No such luck, but there’s some consolation in his next duty station: Schofield Barracks in Hawaii.

The elder Kobes said producers at the taping told him they’d been trying to get the president on the show for a long time.

“They said, ‘Your son must be somebody really special for the president to do that,’” Kobes said. “And I thought, ‘Yeah, he is.’”

Michael Gilbert: 253-597-8921

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