Michael Ameel and Sam Steiber left Los Angeles after a decade, bought a 90-year-old brick Colonial in northwest Evanston, and landed the season premiere of HGTV's House Hunters in the process.

The episode, titled "Midwest Glow Up," aired Sunday, June 28 at 9 p.m. on HGTV. It follows the couple's cross-country move and their search across North Shore communities before settling on Evanston. Part of the episode was filmed at Five & Dime on Davis Street, where the couple held a private screening.

Ameel, a marketing director who grew up near Milwaukee, and Steiber, a social media strategist from the Detroit suburbs, are known online as @stayathomegays. They moved to Los Angeles in 2015 and spent more than a decade building careers there before deciding to head home to be closer to family. They closed on their Evanston home on Halloween, October 31, 2025, and passed out candy to trick-or-treaters in their new neighborhood that same evening.

"There was something about Evanston that really kept pulling us back," Ameel told the Evanston RoundTable.

The couple said they were drawn to the city's historic homes, walkability, lakefront, and public transit access to Chicago. They explored several North Shore towns but kept returning to Evanston. Since moving in, they've refinished hardwood floors, made cosmetic upgrades, and become regulars at Backlot Coffee and Burl, they told Evanston Now.

Their arrival coincides with a hot local market. The average Evanston home value hit $484,026 as of May 31, up 7.1% year-over-year, with homes going to pending in about seven days, according to Zillow.

In early November 2025, a neighbor lent the couple a shovel during the season's first snowfall. After years in Southern California, they didn't own one.