An Alaska family is making Super Bowl history on Sunday.
Kristen Williams of Eagle River and three guests — her husband and her parents — will sleep in a custom-built suite inside Levi's Stadium the night before the Super Bowl, which is something that has never been done before. They will wake up the next morning as the first fans in the stadium for the game between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers.
The wife of YouTube sensation Cory Williams, Kristen Williams won the sleepover in an online social media contest sponsored by a hotel chain. She submitted two 15-second videos, which were shared on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and voted on by judges and fans.
Kristen said when she learned she'd won, she couldn't believe it.
"I was definitely just entering for fun," she said. "I never really thought I would win. When I found out I was a semifinalist, let alone had won the whole thing, for me it was very hard to believe.
"I had to read the email three times just to make sure."
Kristen said she stumbled upon the contest on a Courtyard Marriott website while searching for hotel prices for a potential vacation. She decided to enter and submitted her first video by the Sept. 22 deadline.
Making videos was nothing new for the Williams family — between two YouTube accounts, Cory's videos have attracted more than 250 million views.
Cory appears in Kristen's first video, but her videos were not actually uploaded to any of his YouTube accounts.
For Kristen's first video, the topic was football superstitions. She appears in an orange Oklahoma State shirt. She explains how relaxed she is while watching games but says she always has to wear the lucky shirt of her alma mater.
In the background, Cory is seen smashing and throwing a chair in apparent anger over a football loss.
Judges selected Kristen as a semifinalist, so she got to make a second video. In that one, Kristen talks about the importance of having good Super Bowl food. The camera zooms out to show a table completely covered in snacks, and the video ends with the doorbell ringing and Kirsten going to the door where a pizza delivery driver apparently waits with more food.
Both videos can be viewed at suitestadiumcontest.com.
The second video was chosen as one of four finalists. Kirsten said she chose not to watch the other finalists' videos.
"I was feeling pretty good about my chances at that time because it was me against three other people," she said. "But I didn't want to watch the other videos and really know … what sort of videos the other people had made, so I just chose not to watch them."
Countless likes, retweets and shares later, Kristen came out a winner. According to a Marriott press release, contest entries drew more than 53.8 million impressions on social media.
Joining Kristen and Cory at the big game in San Francisco will be Kristen's parents, Mark and Angela Swift.
Kristen, a Houston Texans fan, said she doesn't know who she will root for in the game, but Cory and her parents are split in their picks.
"My parents are going for the Broncos and my husband is going for the Panthers," she said. "So It's kind of a house divided right now."