The 26-year-old, who graduated from UCA in 2005 with a degree in marketing, beat Mick Trimming of Los Angeles and fan-favorite Russell Hantz of Dayton, Texas for the $1 million prize.

"I knew I had a one in three shot," White said. "But you never want to get too cocky or arrogant, so I didn't ever go buy anything or anything like that. I knew I had a good shot and I knew everyone's feelings with Russ. I didn't think Russ would win."

White estimated her chances of winning at 30 to 40 percent during the final Tribal Council. While there, she took flak from a few jury members for the way she played the game.

Shannon "Shambo" Waters used the word "coattail" to describe White, saying she rode her alliance with Hantz through the entire game without doing any work, which White said wasn't true. She said her actions were just less flashy than Hantz's.

"I saved Russell probably at least three different times just at Foa Foa," she said. "Ashley wanted him off. Liz and Betsy wanted him off. They were trying to rally, trying to get votes against him and I protected him. I was like, 'No, no, no, we need him. He's harmless.' I had such good relationships with them, they believed me."

White was also responsible for Erik Cardona's departure immediately after the tribe merge. She convinced the women of Galu to vote him out, which set the stage for the outnumbered Foa Foa to overwhelm Galu.

White also defended herself against claims that Hantz played the better game, since he found three hidden immunity idols­–two without clues–and had a part in almost everyone getting voted off.

"When [people] were eliminated from the game, as they're leaving the game, [Hantz] would taunt them," she said. "And when we go back to camp, he'd say things about them to people he knew had an alliance with them. It was just bad sportsmanship."

She added: "To be the best player, you have to do a lot of things. You have to be the best all-around player. He played zero social game. Zero."

It was his bad social game that ultimately pushed the jury away from Hantz in the final vote.

After the game ended, there was a five-month gap before the live finale aired. White said keeping quiet about the results while she was home wasn't easy.

"It was really hard, but I signed a $5 million [confidentiality] contract, so things became a little easier," she said.

Once White got back from the game, her sister Alison Hodges said White weighed about 90 pounds, down from 108 before the show started.

"Those movies you see that have the concentration camp victims, she looked really close to that. Maybe not quite as deathly, but she was skin and bones," Hodges said.

During her absence, only a handful of people knew where White went due to confidentiality contracts with CBS.

"We could not tell anybody she did that until they released the cast, like two weeks before the show started," Hodges said. "When she was gone for that long, people are like, 'Well where is she?' Even though she doesn't live [in Bryant] anymore, people still knew that she was gone."

White had to give up her job as a pharmaceutical representative to be on "Survivor," which included giving up all the perks that went along with it: a car, the gas, the car insurance, health insurance and the cushy salary. She got encouragement to leave it all behind from her boyfriend, Justin Thomas, and her entire family.

"I told her that if she does not do this, she'll regret it for the rest of her life," Hodges said. "Mom and dad were a little more cautious about it, saying you're going to lose your job and all that stuff, but they knew it was the chance of a lifetime."

After the finale, White kept busy. She was swept to the red carpet when the show ended where she did interviews for nearly two hours and attended an after party until 2:30 a.m. then went to an after-after party for about an hour before she had to leave to do more interviews and appear on "The Early Show" to accept the $1 million check.

"I did interviews until about 5 or 5:30 p.m. the next day," she said, "I probably did well over 12 hours worth of interviews. There were probably 50 interviews; there were a lot. After that, I fell asleep at the dinner table that night."

White said she already has plans for the $1 million.

"I'm going to save most of it," she said. "I actually donated 10 percent, $100,000 of it. Justin and I will take a really nice vacation, but everything else we'll save."