Those who say Christmas comes but once a year should watch the TODAY show. There, as Katelyn Wilbanks would eagerly attest, yuletide arrives not only in December, but also in July.

Three years ago, when she was 15 and a high school sophomore, Wilbanks, who was born with spina bifida, got a gift of a full four-year scholarship to the University of Oklahoma during TODAY’s “Christmas in July” segment.

On Friday, Christmas arrived again: Wilbanks got to meet her favorite band, Rascal Flatts.

“Oh, my gosh!” Wilbanks exclaimed when Gary LeVox, Jay DeMarcus and Joe Don Rooney walked onto the TODAY set while she was talking to co-host Matt Lauer about graduating high school and preparing to go to college.

Pulling out three tickets to the platinum-selling band’s Sept. 25 concert in Tulsa, LeVox told Wilbanks: “You’re going to be our roadie for the day. You’re going to get to come and hang backstage. You get your own dressing room.”

Wilbanks glowed and covered her face to hide her emotions. When she recovered, she told LeVox, “You guys were already on my calendar.” Except now, she won’t have to buy tickets for the concert as she had planned. (She also promised not to sell the precious passes on eBay.)

Rascal Flatts were visiting TODAY to play on the Plaza as part of the show’s summer concert series. But Wilbanks didn’t know that when she and her mother, Tracy Turner, and her aunt and co-parent, Gwen Clegg, came to New York to appear on TODAY. As far as they knew, they were there just to talk about how her life has been since she was the first person to receive a special “Christmas in July” present on TODAY.

Oklahoma OK
University of Oklahoma president David Boren presented Wilbanks with the full scholarship — room, board, tuition, books — on that show in 2005. Wilbanks had just had her left leg amputated, a result of an endemic infection that was a result of her birth defect. She desperately wanted to join Sooner Nation, but her family were too poor to afford the tuition.

Her father had abandoned her and her two older siblings three months after her birth. He had taken one look at her — the only look he ever took — and walked out, unable to deal with the spina bifida that afflicted the infant girl.

Wilbanks has had 56 surgeries during her 18 years, and twice — at age 1 and again at age 3 — doctors told her mother she was likely to die. But she not only survived, she thrived, showing a lust for life and even learning to do back flips on her prosthetic leg.

Since getting her promise of a scholarship, she’s been counting down the years, months and now days until she can go to college.

“I’m excited. It’s amazing,” she told Lauer. “We’ve just been getting everything ready to go to school and making time go faster so I can get up there.”

A job waiting
Adding to Wilbanks’ anticipation is the promise of a very special campus job.

“My dream job,” Wilbanks called it. “I’m working for the University of Oklahoma football team. I’ll be one of the managers in the equipment room.”

The scholarship the university provided has already been repaid countless times. In the week after Wilbanks’ story was chronicled by TODAY three years ago, viewers donated $10 million to the school’s scholarship fund. Ultimately, contributions made so that others like Wilbanks could go to college totaled $130 million.

The university, Boren said in a separate interview, “Is going to be changed forever because she’s here.”

The story also made Wilbanks’ mother, Turner, a resource for other parents of children with spina bifida or other conditions. After seeing on TODAY how fiercely Turner fought for her daughter, people started calling her from all over the country.

“There were just questions, concerns of how the outcome would be of certain surgeries or illnesses that they were facing,” Turner told Lauer. “I gave them our experiences. It’s great that you can reach out and talk to another parent.”

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