Twenty-one years ago, when Donnie Moran climbed out of his car on Eldora Speedway’s stage as the winner of the Eldora Million, there was one person he was looking for above all others.

The then 38-year-old superstar from Dresden, Ohio, only had eyes for his wife, Brenda, after collecting a $1 million prize that was the biggest in dirt-track racing history.

“It was like, ‘Man, I just won this race!’ and when I got out and (Eldora owners) Earl and Berniece said, ‘You’re the next new millionaire,’ I said, ‘Brenda, come here!’” Donnie recalled two decades later. “I wanted her up there with me. It was pretty emotional for both of us at that moment right there. It’s something I’ll never forget, when I got to hug her and kiss her right there at that moment when it just happened.”

As Moran said then as well as now, his victory in the inaugural Eldora Million didn’t belong merely to him. His wife was an equal partner in his monumental achievement. It was Brenda who, since their marriage in 1991, had been by his side all the way, traveling the country, helping raise their brood of children — four young boys at the time of the Million with a daughter, the couple’s fifth and final child, arriving just four days after the big race — and experiencing all the highs and lows of a full-time professional Dirt Late Model driver’s life.

This was the payoff for all the Morans’ trials and tribulations. This was a victory that made worthwhile all those hours Donnie put in and all the unyielding support Brenda had always given him.

“When we dated and stuff, in ’91, and we talked about getting married, I said, ‘Hey, this is me, this is what I’m gonna do. Either we can call it off right now or you can be a part of it with me the rest of my life,’ ” Donnie said of his life devoted to racing. “And here we are 30 years later, still married, and everything’s great.”

Indeed, Donnie and Brenda have been an inseparable team for three decades. This man who started racing as a fresh-faced teenager and this woman who knew nothing about the sport until adulthood turned out to be a perfect match.

“My cousin was married to one of his friends and they took me to my first race, which was actually at Eldora and must have been the World (100) because they didn’t have the Dream then,” Brenda recalled. “And it rained, and they made me sit in a van and I was like, ‘What is going on?’ There’s people sliding in the mud, and I was like, ‘Where have you brought me?’ Then a few weeks later they took me up to Buckeye (Speedway) in Wooster (Ohio) and I met Donnie and we started talking and stuff, and I think we just kind of knew from the beginning (they were meant to be together).

“I mean, we only dated for eight or nine months and got married, and I accepted right from the beginning that the race car was his first love and that’s kind of how I approached it. I knew that racing was his life, and I had to accept that and become a part of it if we were gonna make it work. And I did, and I guess I’m not a jealous person because it never bothered me when other girls would come up to him and want his autograph and this and that. I mean, I remember watching him autograph people’s breasts or whatever, and it didn’t make me jealous. I just thought, ‘These people are crazy.’

“(Racing) became our life,” she added, “and it became my new way of life and our kids’.”

And the pinnacle of that existence came that June day in 2001 when Donnie earned a seven-figure check and shared the joy with a pregnant Brenda.

“I knew going in (to the Million) there were 235 people going for it, and everybody knew Scott (Bloomquist) was the one to beat and Billy (Moyer) would be one to beat, because there for awhile in the ‘90s, us three just dominated the place,” Donnie said, noting his prowess at Eldora alongside his fellow Hall of Famers. “More than anything, it was the biggest race of all times, and in my career, when I was racing, I can say that it definitely put me on top at that moment in time. I took it, I grabbed it, I went with it, and I got it. I’m not trying to be conceited on myself, but sometimes if you want it bad enough you gotta work hard for it, and I worked hard racing.”

With the second running of the Eldora Million just days away, the story of Donnie’s triumph in the first one — before, during and after the race — follow, the Donnie and Brenda’s own words.

VIDEO: Watch the original Eldora Million feature on FloRacing. 

Prelude to the Million

Earl Baltes, the legendary late Eldora founder and promoter, announced in February 2000 during the annual Racing Promotion Monthly Workshops in Daytona Beach, Fla., that he was adding a third crown jewel event to his half-mile oval’s schedule later that year: the Eldora Million on Oct. 6-7, a race that would offer a gargantuan $1 million to its winner to immediately become the richest short-track event ever contested. The news didn’t come as a shock to the well-connected Morans, but it still was startling.

Donnie: We heard through the grapevine that he was wanting to have a Million before he passed on or got rid of the track. That was before it actually got announced, and we were like, “Boy, that would be awesome. That’s pretty cool of Earl to want to give back something to the racer and show he has the best racetrack in the country.” You thought about the prestige you could get from it and that somebody could be a millionaire in one day. Then the rumor become a reality, it actually become a fact that it was happening.

Brenda: You’re like, “Wow! If he won a million dollars, what could we do with that? That would be like a dream come true.” It’s like, if you play the lottery, you’re always like, “Whew! What if I actually win? What would happen?” But, you know, his chances were a lot higher with the Eldora Million simply because he’s had a lot of success at Eldora. The odds were a little better. For Donnie, it was the perfect place.

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Already a five-time crown jewel winner at Eldora (one Dream, four World 100s), Donnie eyed the October Eldora Million with great anticipation after feeling he could have won September’s World 100 with his MasterSbilt car.

Donnie: We was at the World there in September and we was actually pretty good. I started back (in the pack) and we was actually coming through. I think we was up to second or third and we was quite a bit faster on the stopwatch than anybody else. I could tell where the leaders was and I was gaining on them. This is 40 or 60 laps into it, and I’m like, “This baby is gonna be over here in about another 20 laps.” You kind of think that when the car is really coming in perfect. Then the left-rear hub broke and we was out (finishing 18th), but we knew going back to the Million we would have a really good shot at it.

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The Eldora Million never happened in October, of course; wet, dreary fall weather prompted Baltes to reschedule the event for June 8-9, 2001, replacing that year’s Dream. Donnie’s racing program would be dramatically different by that date.

Donnie: We actually had a GRT (car) in Florida (for February’s Speedweeks) and we was just terrible, just flat, plain terrible. C.J. (Rayburn) come over … you know, I’d run Rayburn cars before, and he’d let me use cars and stuff like that, and he goes, “Moran, you need to get you one of these cars. You come up to my shop. I’ve got two of ‘em sitting up there for you.” So we went there (to Rayburn’s in Whiteland, Ind.) and made the decision to switch cars. We went to his shop to build it and went straight to Atomic, Chillicothe (Ohio) — I think it was our first race after Speedweeks — and it was slick, and we won. It was like a $7,000-to-win or something like that (it was a STARS-sanctioned event on April 7 that actually paid $8,000), and it was like, “Oh my golly, this thing is awesome.” We kept racing that car and I told (Rayburn), “I want to build another one,” which he had said he’d give me two. I said, “I’m gonna build that car brand-new for Eldora.” He’s like, “Oh, no, no,” but I built it brand new (for the Million), and the only track it’s ever been on is Eldora. I never had it on Muskingum (County, Moran’s father Ronnie’s track in Zanesville, Ohio) either. It was one race on it, one and done, and it’s setting here in my shop to this day.

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There was just one, uh, “test” for Moran’s new Rayburn car before he headed to Eldora in June.

Donnie: We had it finished and I wanted to seat the brakes in, so on this side road down here (near his shop), I went up to the top of the hill and come back down through here and gassed it pretty hard and was on the brakes really hard to seat them in. I made sure everything was OK and then pulled it back up my driveway, and we did a nut-and-bolt check on it, loaded it up and away we went to Eldora.

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The engine under the car’s hood was primed for action as well.

Donnie: I had a Charlie Fisher motor, and I’ve got to give Charlie Fisher a lot of credit. He was not just a real top-tier engine builder, but he was a good friend, a good coach at Eldora. He actually needs to be put in the Sprint Car Hall of Fame, too. He built my engine for the Million, and when they had that Mopar Million for the sprint cars (a $200,000-to-win wingless race at Eldora in 2003), Charlie built that engine that was in (winner Jan) Haudenschild’s car. So as of right now, there’s only been two million-dollar purse races (in short-track racing), and Charlie built the winning engine for both of ‘em. He was ahead of his time … he told me what (the Million) motor would do. We actually raced it at Bristol (in a Hav-A-Tampa event on the dirt-covered Tennessee track) the week before (the Million), and he goes, “You get home Sunday, you get it out, you get it over here, and I’ll have everything ready to rebuilt it.” And he rebuilt it, freshened it up 100 percent. He didn’t have a dyno room or anything. He put it back together, then went out there and coached me and helped me, and we won. That’s how much I counted on him. Charlie was real good with sprint car teams that run good at Eldora and knew what it took at Eldora, so he kind of built that engine especially for Eldora, to get what he called ‘up on pipe,’ for peak performance there. He knew what it needed.

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Aside from the technical aspects of Moran’s plans for the Eldora Million, Donnie and his wife had potentially a bigger worry: Brenda was due to deliver the couple’s fifth child, Savanna, just days after the race. Should she even attend the event being so close to her due date?

Donnie: With the four boys and getting ready to have Savanna and then me stressing her out with preparations for the race, she was getting pretty stressed out, and she had a few complications (with the pregnancy). So within two, three weeks before the race, we had to go to the doctor. The doctor recommended her not to go, and she said, “I’m going.” He didn’t realize it was that big a race, but I told her, “Hey, it’s not the end of the world. You’re more important than anything, more important than the biggest race or a million bucks or whatever, so if I don’t get to go because we’re in the hospital, then so be it. That’s the way it would work out.”

Brenda: (Savanna) was the fifth (child), so it was just, like, we rolled with it. You didn’t really think about being going into labor (during the race weekend). Obviously he would’ve still went racing. He probably would’ve been there and then bolted, but … I think Wylie (the couple’s youngest son) was born just a few weeks before the World 100 (in 1997), but we weren’t ones that just stayed at home with our kids. They were born, we came home, and then went right back to the racetrack as soon as there was a race. I think they were all at the races within a couple weeks.

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Brenda wasn’t going to miss such a huge race, so her parents, who typically traveled alongside the Moran family to help with Donnie’s T-shirt trailer and watch the boys, were dispatched to Eldora before the start of the weekend to do some reconnaissance work.

Brenda: (Doctors) actually put me on bed rest for (Savanna), but nothing severe, and it wasn’t, like, you can’t get up. It was just, “Be careful, low activity.” I remember asking the doctor, I said, “There’s a really big race out at Eldora. It’s three hours from here. Can we go?” He was like, “Well, you probably shouldn’t.” But I said, “My parents are coming too,” so he said, “Well, have them go out early and find the quickest route to the hospital so if you would go into labor you would know where to go.” So that’s what we did — mom and dad went out and found the best route to the hospital.

Donnie: Her mom and dad, Dick and Rita, they checked on the Dayton Hospital, how long it would take to get there, what we needed to do in case something happened (at the track). Then when it was all said and done and it was over, we was on (local) TV (doing interviews), we had the newspapers from Zanesville and Newark and Coshocton and Mount Vernon doing stuff about us, and we went to have the baby (four days after the Million) the doctor had seen it and goes, “Well, if I knew it was for a million dollars I’d have just went with you!”

Brenda: When we came back and I went into labor, the doctor came in and said, “If you would’ve told me the race was for a million dollars I would’ve just went with you.”

VIDEO: Donnie's son Devin Moran is hoping to follow in his father's footsteps at the Eldora Million.

Race day

Strapped into his new car, the Eldora Million weekend couldn’t have gone any better for Moran. He qualified perfectly Friday to land up front in a Saturday heat, then parlayed a victory in the prelim into a front-row starting spot in the 100-lap finale. He overtook Don O’Neal for the lead on lap 26 and never looked back en route to a short-but-safe margin of victory over Tennessee’s Steve Smith, who was a surprise $50,000 runner-up also driving a Rayburn car.

Donnie: We qualified and was on the front of the fifth heat, we won that and started on the outside pole of the feature. I passed O’Neal and just went on. Right at the end the track started rubbering up a little, kept getting a little bit different … not a whole lot, but a little. People said that Smith got close to me, and I said that with like 27 laps to go or something there was a caution and I put over a straightaway on everybody. Then a couple lapped cars kind of pinched me in and I had to get out of it (late in the distance), and that was really the only reason he got to me. We blistered both rear tires, but that’s the way those Rayburn cars would be. They was traction monsters. Mine might have been giving up, but I was a cushion-pusher, and Smith, he run through some of the middle of the racetrack, so the top was going away but we was there at the end.

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Was Moran concerned about possibility of a last-lap shootout for $1 million?

Donnie: It never really crossed my mind. There was a lot of hype and talk about that. People would say, “I’d wreck my mom or grandma to win that race.” You heard all kinds of stories. But you know, back then, there was more respect than there is today with drivers. It was just a different generation. I’m not saying people wouldn’t take each other out, because we took people out, people took me out before. But it was a situation to where it seemed like it was never at that moment. When somebody’s coming off turn four for the last lap this time, fireworks could happen, but I was fortunate I was a couple car lengths ahead to where (Smith) couldn’t get to me and that’s the way it finished. But really, until you know that circumstance, and you have two people making that situation happen at that moment, it could be on lap 90, it could be on lap 10, you could have people racing with people that have a grudge … so you never know when it’s actually going to happen.

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There was a natural moment of trepidation, though, when Moran headed to the scales for his car’s postrace weigh-in.

Donnie: I made sure that we had enough weight in the car that if we ran out of fuel we’d still be good. I wanted to make sure (a disqualification for weighing light) wasn’t gonna happen. But still, even after I got the checkered flag, I drove around and tried to get my left side in the mud on the inside of the track just to get a little extra on it for an insurance policy.

Brenda: I never really worried about the scales. I don’t know if I ever remember Donnie getting disqualified at the scales.

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For Brenda, the stress came during the race. Watching the action sitting in a lawn chair on the turn-one hillside near where she spent the weekend working her husband’s T-shirt trailer (“It was just easier with all the boys to put blankets and chairs there and they could roll around and lay on the ground and we didn’t have to wrestle them into the bleachers,” she said), she had a perfect angle to see Donnie repeatedly scrape the turn-two wall. And with Donnie spending so much time in the lead, Brenda had to take some breaks to relax.

Brenda: Eldora’s always made me more nervous. I don’t really get nervous about their safety — I know they have the best safety equipment, him and Devin both. I know there’s always that tragedy that happens, but their safety is never something I’ve gotten nervous or stressed about. But Eldora’s always been more nerve-racking I think, because I know how much Eldora means to Donnie any time he goes out there and races. I mean, the week before every big race at Eldora he would build a new car … you wouldn’t want to go around him. You just let him be and do his thing. That track has always meant so much to him, and running good out there and being successful there. I think the most nerve-racking part of it is wanting him to be successful there, and the same thing with Devin. I want him to be successful there. And the wall doesn’t help, because if that cushion sucks you into the wall the chances of your surviving are thin.

Donnie: She said she was so nervous that she actually went back behind the bleachers and sat down in the rocks and was playing with the rocks to get her mind off (the race).

Brenda: My mom just kept telling me, “You have to stay calm. You have to stay calm.” But if you start on the front row it’s either, “Yay,” or a complete letdown, so I would just go back and sit in the rocks, play with them a little bit just to keep my nerves as calm as I could.

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During the race’s circuits, another worry entered Brenda’s mind.

Brenda: I guess I didn’t think about it until right at the end of the race, but my aunt and uncle were there with us, and my aunt looked over at my mom with like 10 laps left, and she was like, “If he wins this, we all need to grab the kids.” She was worried that someone might try and grab one of the kids for ransom or something like that, so that was in the back of my mind. I was like, “Oh my God, I’ve got to get my kids!”

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When the checkered flag flew, Brenda let loose with relief and then made her way with the kids — Brodie, 9, Devin, 6, and Wylie, 3 — down the hill and along the front of the grandstand to the crossover gate at the flagstand to meet Donnie in victory lane.

Brenda: It’s just hard to explain. It was just unreal. The excitement, and all the fans … everyone around us knew who we were and they were all excited. And with the kids, all the fans knew them because they were always running around and talking to everybody, plus there weren’t that many drivers that had a family in tow like us. It was very emotional, emotional for everyone. I think we were all just in tears just from the happiness and the relief that it was over, because there’s so much build up and preparation to something like that. When it’s over, whether you win or not, there’s just a rush of emotions. And with winning it, I don’t even think we really said anything. I just remember him hugging me and just holding each other in disbelief. It took a few days for it to actually sink in that, “Wow! He actually won a million dollars!”

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The Moran family moment on the winner’s stage was missing only 5-year-old Tristin, who didn’t make the trip.

Brenda: Donnie’s sister and brother-in-law had retired (from serving on Donnie’s crew), and Donnie asked them to help him at the Million. They have a son that’s just a month older than Tristin and they didn’t want to take their kids so they were leaving them at Donnie’s mom’s house, so they asked us if we would leave Tristin there too so (their son) would have someone to play with. That’s the only reason that Tristin wasn’t there, and he calls us out on it all the time.

Donnie: Now he always goes, “Can you photo bomb me in the pictures with all you guys?” Tristin’s great, he’s pretty carefree, and he says, “I can’t believe you guys left me at home!”

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Normally after his Eldora crown jewel wins Moran would have to go to the press and officials tower in the grandstand to collect his money — his World 100 payoffs even came in cold, hard cash — but he received his $1 million from Baltes during the postrace ceremonies.

Donnie: Earl gave me the check on stage when I was standing by my car in victory lane. And it was funny. He was toying with me. You know how he’d always stand on stage and say this and that, and he was so comical. He said, “I hate to do this,” and when I’d start to grab it he’d pull his hand back and just laugh. “I can’t give you this! This might be no good!” He was saying all sorts of things. He might have said something about needing to sell one more hot dog (to pay the purse), but I don’t remember. I said, “Well, Earl, if it bothers you that much, I’ll tell you what, you just keep it and trade me the deed for this place.” Buddy, he handed it over that instant and just smiled. So I wasn’t the only millionaire that night.

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The Morans went on to savor the moment with family, friends, supports and fans, remaining in the pit area until the wee hours.

Donnie: We was the last one out of the pits after all the different people congratulated us, but at one point there was two haulers left in the pits — one was Scott (Bloomquist, who finished third) and one was me. Scott seemed like he waited till everybody was gone and he come over and shook my hand and told me, “Congratulations, and make it go as far as it can go.” I thought that was pretty cool of Scott to do that, because I looked up to Scott then as a fellow driver. That was really neat.

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When Donnie and Brenda finally made it back to their camper parked above turns one and two, they had a chance to reflect on the night away from the crowds.

Donnie: With her being pregnant, she was craving food and she wanted a bowl of Fruit Loops to eat, so I said, “What the hell? I’ll just have a bowl of Fruit Loops, too. This is our celebration meal.” So we had a bowl of Fruit Loops and we went to bed, I don’t know, 4 o’clock or 4:30, in our camper right up there beside the T-shirt trailer.

Brenda: I had went back up and put all the kids to bed, and then we finally came in, laid down in bed, and we just started laughing. I mean, what just happened?

Donnie: After a few hours, I said, or maybe she said, “You awake?” And we just started laughing. I said, “Oh my God! We might as well go home.” With her being pregnant and not eating much, but eating often, she had a craving for McDonald’s pancakes and sausage — that’s all she’ll ever eat at McDonald’s — so we drove down to Greenville with the camper and the T-shirt trailer. I went into McDonald’s and these two guys in front of me had racing T-shirts on but they didn’t know me, and I heard them say, “What about that guy winning the million dollars last night! That was so cool!” I just listened to ‘em and this and that … and I had the million-dollar check in my pocket. I guess to this day, them guys never knew that was me behind him. I never said a word, just kept to myself.

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During his drive home, Moran started thinking about his winning car and what he wanted to do with it.

Donnie: We built it directly for that race. I was on a deal with (Rayburn), and he said, “If you race the car 25 times, you get it free.” Well, when I won the Million, I said, “Hey, I need another car. I’m parking this thing. I’m retiring it.” He said, “Ah, you don’t do that!” I said, “Yeah, there might not ever be another (Million) in my lifetime, and that’s the first one that ever won a million dollars and I want to keep it.” He says, “Well, if you’re gonna park it, you never raced it 25 times, so you have to pay me for it.” So I had to buy that car after I won the million. I had to pay him. I didn’t get no deal either. He said, “You got enough money now so you can pay for it.” I paid him quite a bit of money that year because he made me pay for everything after winning that million. But after all the free stuff he gave me my whole life, and driving for him, I’m not complaining. He treated me like he was one of his kids. He was a very big inspiration in my life of racing.

The aftermath

Upon returning to their home in Dresden, Ohio, on Sunday, the Morans were greeted with a warm, celebratory reception. It was an unforgettable slice of time, one that Donnie in particular said made winning the Million even more special.

Brenda: There were people in the driveway, they had hung signs up on the front of the garage. It was neat. It was definitely an experience.

Donnie: I wish this year they would’ve (replaced the Dream with the Million rather than run them back-to-back on June 8-9 and June 10-11) because when you win the biggest race of all times — which, the driver who wins (the Million) this time, no matter who it is, it’s gonna be their biggest win ever — it’s nice you get to enjoy that night. It was awesome for me. And it wasn’t just the next day, it was the whole week. We got home on Sunday and people was waiting in the driveway and signs and posters were all over my garage … it was just unbelievable. I wish that what I experienced with that, and all the TV stuff and the things people wanted to do, this year’s winner could experience the same thing, but they’re running (the Million) on Thursday night and the Dream qualifications start the next day. The money will still be there, and it will still be you won the biggest race, but all that enjoyment, that experience, will go away so quick if you stay and race that next race. I wish, instead of from a business standpoint the way they’re doing it, they would’ve done it the way it was before. Because man, that was an enjoyment, experiencing all that stuff. You’re like, “Did this really happen? Did I really accomplish this? Did our team do this? Did our family really do this?” There were so many things that you could absorb.

Brenda: We got tons of emails, congratulations, comments on the social media we had at that time. I printed everything out so we could have all the comments and go back and look at them over time.

Donnie: A lot of local people really made it pretty special, but I had people calling from Australia because I used to go there and race, people calling from all over. We was actually gonna race the next weekend somewhere, but with us having Savanna (four days later on June 13), and the people constantly stopping at the shop, the guys that worked for me, we could not get nothing done. Everybody wanted to see the Million car. Sometimes I wasn’t (at the shop) because I was at the hospital with Brenda, but it was such a great time and an experience. I’ve won the World, won the Dream, won the Dirt Track (World Championship), the Hillbilly, these different crown jewel races … I don’t know if it’ll be the same (for this year’s winner) because they’ve already had one, but it was a really, really exciting time. I’m not trying to be negative about this one, but I just know what I experienced and it was so awesome. That was a moment in time.

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As for the million-dollar check, Donnie didn’t head to his local bank first thing Monday morning to deposit it.

Brenda: He kept if for a few days before he even took it to the bank. He was like, “I just want to hold on to this for a while.” I think I was actually in the hospital when he went to the bank.

Donnie: I called my accountant, and he was the vice president of our bank. He said, “Come over here to this desk and have her (a worker there) get it taken care of. I said, “I want to put it in a checking account that draws interest, and I’m not gonna touch it for one month. When my statement comes back, I want to show everybody that I was a millionaire one time.” Well, this lady there, when I said I wanted to open this account … he must not have told her, and she looked at that check and her hands started shaking so bad. I said, “Are you OK?” She said, “I’ve never done anything like this, nothing this big, before!”

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Thankfully, Moran’s $1 million went into a corporate account, allowing him to avoid heavier individual taxes.

Donnie: I checked, and I even checked with another firm about what we needed to do, but I was under Donnie Moran Racing Inc., so it was like a business income. So, you know, I got to work it and use writeoffs and stuff as a business instead of an individual. I did pay a lot of taxes, but if I had quit (racing) that day and done (the deposit) as an individual, I would have had to pay $438,000 in taxes. But with me running it as a business, I didn’t have to. At the end of the year I had to pay taxes, but I got to do things like invest and different things.

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And the Morans got to see the seven figures appear in a bank account.

Donnie: It was was pretty good, and I said, “Boy, Uncle Sam’s gonna like me this year!”

Brenda: I don’t even know that there’s words to explain. It was just an overwhelming joy and pride for him, for his success. It’s just unreal. It’s like, wow! Where do you even start? What do you do to invest it? And the government’s portion? What do we do now? Who do we talk to?

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The Morans’ newfound wealth did produce some negative repercussions. Like a lottery winner who suddenly is viewed as having limitless financial wherewithal, there were some who figured they must be set for life.

Donnie: It had its good and bad moments. There was some people that wanted to get on board and be part of the Million Dollar Man deal, and there were actually people that sponsored me who said, “OK, now since you got this, you’ve got enough money and we’re not gonna do it no more.”

Brenda: He always struggled getting sponsors I think because his dad was in the oil well business, so they were always like, “Well, you have all the money.” His dad did help him get started, he invested a lot into it, but by the time we were married, his dad wasn’t investing anymore and it was just the turnaround from what he would win. Well, after the Million, people figured we had plenty of money. We had people calling us wanting us to invest in, like, cattle ranches, all kinds of weird things.

Donnie: When I had people who ask for money — like, they literally ask, “Can we have a hundred bucks?” — I was like, you know, I won a million dollars. Can you imagine what these superstar players in the NBA and football and baseball or whatever, with multimillion dollar contracts, $50 million, $100 million, how in the world can they handle people who do this? There for a moment I was like pretty much a celebrity around home and the racetrack, and I was like, “How can guys like Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt, how can these people with so much money, handle it all?” It’s no wonder you see them super high-profile people exclude themselves from restaurants and places and people sometimes and have bodyguards. It was not even on the same level for me as them people, but I got to see a little bit of a spark of it and it was like, “Oh my golly!”

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Did the million-dollar win change the Morans’ lives? In some sense it did, but they’re not eccentric people, not people who went out and made lavish purchases as soon as they received the big check. As Donnie always likes to say, they stayed even-keel and maintained a steady course in life.

Donnie: We just paid a few bills off, a few loans off, stuff like that. I built my shop in ’91, and I actually built my house in ’96, the year we won Eldora both times (Dream and World 100 in the same season). I did all the above before the Million.

Brenda: The people in the racing world from around here, they all, for the most part, were congratulatory, but as far as changing our lives … in the racing world, yes, he’s always known now as the Million Dollar Man, but as far as our everyday life, I would say there wasn’t really a change. We tried to keep everything as similar as it was. We already had our home, he had his garage. We caught up on all of our bills from racing and that kind of stuff, but in our little community, unless people knew about racing … they covered it in the newspaper, but day-to-day, it didn’t change it. 

Donnie: I kind of lived and died by, “You gotta ride the wave.” What that means is, the highs are high and the lows are low, so try to stay in the middle, because once you get on top you’ll get knocked clear down to the bottom. And sometimes on your curve to the bottom it’ll pick you up and put you back on top. That happened to me so many different times in my career racing, and what I try to tell Devin when he’s running good or not running good is, “Dude, you gotta ride the wave. You’ll go to both sides of the wave, so don’t too high or too high because if you go long enough it’ll change.”