The number of contenders in NBC's "The Apprentice" show is down to three and one is an Iowa housewife whose possible triumph would be the first by a woman.

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Tana Goertz, 37, of West Des Moines, was one of 18 contestants when the current season opened.

Now she and two others face two more of the show's nail-biting boardroom eliminations before one emerges as an employee of The Donald. No woman has ever won the competition.

That finale is set for May 19.

If Goertz wins it will culminate a long period of yearning for the honor.

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"She said, 'I could beat those people,'" her husband, KCCI-TV meteorologist Kurtis Gertz, said of his wife's many hours of watching the show before becoming a contestant.

Finally, her mother told her, "Tana, you need to go on that," a move Gertz fully supported.

"I asked my husband if he minded ... and he said, 'Absolutely not,'" Tana told the Des Moines Register. "We have a live-and-let-live relationship, and he said, 'If it's something you want, go for it.'"