Long Island couple stars in HGTV's new 'Flip to a Million'

Two professional house-flipping couples each get $1,000 and six months to renovate houses in unfamiliar territory, laddering up sequentially to a million-dollar sale in HGTV's new "Flip to a Million," premiering Monday at 9:01 p.m. One of those two couples is Bayport's Jon and Dani Wrobel.

"We were doing our flips," Jon Wrobel, 32, recalls of being cast on the new show, "and one of our friends that we do business with is a big realtor out here on Long Island. And he got a call from a casting company saying they were looking nationally for a flipping couple, and he passed them along to us. We didn't think anything was going to happen from it. But Dani called and then it turned into rounds of Skype interviews and then the pandemic happened, and it was about a year-and-a-half, two-year process. And then one day we got a phone call: 'Hey, you wanna be on TV?' "

They did. "Flip to a Million” subsequently deposited the Wrobels and a Chicago couple, Jason and E.J. Williams, into the Dallas area, which was unknown territory for all four.

"We were expecting the wild, wild West!" Dani Wrobel, 33, who was born in Manhasset and raised in Plainview, says with a laugh. Adds Jon, her husband of 7½ years, "I was expecting gigantic ranches and horses running everywhere and cattle, that sort of thing. I was expecting the Texas you see in TV and the movies." But in suburban Plano, where they and their then 5-year-old twin daughters Lily and Ava lived for the duration, "You would think you're on Long Island. I guess it's the Long Island of Dallas."

The Queens-born and Patchogue-raised Jon had gotten into house-flipping — buying a property and doing a quick renovation in order to sell it for a profit rather than living there — while working as a correction officer at Fishkill Correctional Facility in upstate Beacon. His father, Andy Wrobel, now a retired correction officer, had a longtime sideline flipping houses. Jon and his brothers helped out, but "it was more of a hobby than anything," he says.

Dani, originally an occupational therapist who retains an active license, met her future husband about 10 years ago "when Jon was on these projects with his father, flipping. And it was like magic seeing that."
"Dani's, like, 'Wow, this is so awesome,' " Jon says of her exposure to the concept. "Flipping shows weren't as big as they are now, and seeing it in person, Dani immediately took to it. From that point on, she really got involved in her designs. We would put a house on the market, and people would give us the same feedback all the time, how much they loved her designs. Dani got very involved with it and pretty much took the lead on almost all these projects."

Jon, a Patchogue-Medford High School and St. Joseph's University graduate, and Dani, a graduate of Plainview-Old Bethpage JFK High School and the University at Buffalo, have recently expanded their True Place real estate investment company with a soon-to-open home-and-lifestyle store in Sayville. 

In the meantime, Jon says, "I think the show is going to show Americans realistically what it is to flip houses. It's not like these TV shows where, poof, magically there's a house under renovation and it's done. Each day's a new challenge. This really shows the ins and outs of the business."