Viral selfie lands Red Lion father, son on 'Steve Harvey'

Dallastown High School graduate Correll Stanfield didn’t think anything of it when he took a selfie with his father at an Atlanta shopping mall about a month ago.

But a 61-character tweet later, and the father-son duo found themselves on Tuesday’s episode of the “Steve Harvey Show.”

“Pops, he looks more like my brother, this man 46 years old,” the tweet said, along with a photo of the two men posing in T-shirts.

In a month’s time, the photo racked up almost 19,000 retweets, more than 25,000 favorites and almost 2 million views and was picked up by BuzzFeed and the Huffington Post. The tweet was also trending at the No. 2 spot in France for a few days, Stanfield said.

“As soon as I posted it on my Twitter, the reception we got was unbelievable to the point where I had to shut my phone off,” Stanfield, 20, of Baltimore, told Harvey when the show aired at 3 p.m. Tuesday. “I’d open up my Twitter app and it would start freezing, glitching.”

“Your phone lost it,” Harvey joked.

But even after all of the buzz, Stanfield said he never expected to make it on television – let alone a half-hour segment that appeared ahead of Snooki on Tuesday’s guest lineup.

“I was surprised,” he said.  “Being from where I come from, not everybody has that opportunity. So, where I come from, it’s a blessing.”

Stanfield said he got a call from both “The Real” and the “Steve Harvey Show” shortly after tweeting the photo, but he and his father ultimately decided they wanted to share their story with Harvey. They completed a few pre-interviews, and before they knew it, they were on a plane to Chicago.

“It was the first time I had makeup on my face,” Stanfield said of the filming process. “It was weird. But all fun and new.”

During the show, Stanfield’s father, Billy, told Harvey he wasn’t always the best of fathers.

Billy grew up in a two-parent household and was one of the top high school athletes in the nation, but a series of bad decisions led him to becoming a major drug dealer in Baltimore and spending five years in prison, he said on the show. But now, he said he’s a married pastor who has taken control of his family and started a mentoring program for at-risk youth in Baltimore.

“We’ve always been close,” Correll said. “But the show let me see a little more about him.”

Billy also got the opportunity to learn more about his son.

Toward the end of the segment, Harvey played matchmaker and tried to set Correll up with one of two women he had hand-picked for him.

Though Correll didn’t score a date with his first choice – Harvey’s daughter – he said his time on the show was a great experience that could possibly lead to future television opportunities.

“It was a good thing being on national TV,” he said. “I’m getting a lot of love. It’s opened some doors and avenues. Right now, I’m just riding the wave.”