By Lauren Bishop / Enquirer staff writer

Tonight on NBC, the grown children of a divorced man will begin the arduous process of screening 13 women to decide which one would make the ideal wife for their father.

It's a setup that 49-year-old Don Mueller of Glendale knows well: He was the star of the first season of Who Wants to Marry My Dad? last summer. And he says he'll definitely be watching tonight.

"I just know it'll be funny and that there will be some surprises because that's just the way they do it," Mueller says.

He also hopes the show's producers learned from his experience, which ended with him proposing to Christena Ferran. But the two ultimately decided to remain just friends.

The problem is that she lives in San Diego and he lives in Ohio, and neither wants to pick up and move, he says. This season, however, two are from Colorado, the same state this season's dad, Marty Okland,47, calls home.

But Mueller says he and Christena correspond every few months, and that he's dating a little bit." Mueller still runs his Fairfield map-publishing business, Mass Marketing Inc., although he says he misses being on camera. His children have benefitted from the limelight, too. His daughter, Heidi, landed a role on the NBC soap Passions.

Who Wants to Marry My Dad? premieres at 10 p.m. today, Channels 5, 22.

E-mail lbishop@enquirer.com