Television talent show junkies out there know that a pigtailed, yodeling 11-year-old named Taylor Ware was a finalist on NBC's "America's Got Talent" last night. Well, we're here to tell you that we discovered her first.

(And we honestly don't mean to obsess about yodels… but this shtick was too good to pass up.)

During the summer of 2003, we hosted the Yahoo! Yodel Challenge — a quest to find "America's Favorite Amateur Yodeler." We soon discovered there are many more closet yodelers than one might imagine. A posse of Yahoos — joined by singer, songwriter, rancher, horseman and none-other-than the voice behind our yodel, Wylie Gustafson, who hosted the proceedings — traipsed across the country to select eight finalists among hundreds of auditioning contestants from New York, San Francisco, Kansas City, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Austin. I remember serving as a judge on a particularly warm Seattle morning, the air filled with yodels ranging from delightfully mellifluous to sounds that might emanate from ailing livestock.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, an unassuming brown package arrived at our headquarters from Franklin, Tennessee. Tucked inside was a grainy VHS tape with a little gingham-bedecked girl yodeling her heart out in a barn before an audience of horses. We all looked at each other in knowing silence after watching this phenomenal performance (or maybe we were just thinking back on all those airport check-in lines, hotel breakfasts and staging setups and takedowns). What a voice! And from a four-foot-nothing body! We knew this yodeling protégé had everything it took to win this gig.

And win she did... earning an appearance in a Yahoo! TV ad and a $10,000 prize, which she said would be allocated toward a puppy, pierced ears and a college degree. Oh, and Taylor was invited to be one of the 1,773 people who helped us break the Guinness record for the world's largest group yodel in our cafeteria.

Check out a little video montage below that we pulled together to demonstrate just how cute those pigtails were three years ago (and here's our Flickr set with Taylor, Wylie and more contestants).

Taylor, congrats to you. Whether you win tonight or not, can we have your autograph?