MOORESVILLE, N.C. -- A Mooresville teenager is making a name for herself on national TV.

Shannon O'Hara, 17, is a nanny in her spare time but music is where her true passion lies.

O'Hara auditioned for American Idol last fall in Savannah, and on the March 18 episode of the show, she made it past the celebrity judges panel and snagged her Golden Ticket to Hollywood.

"I was just really at peace about it, I wasn't super nervous," she said of her celebrity audition, which came after preliminary auditions in Asheville and New Orleans weeks before.

"When I was finally in Savannah for my judge audition, everything came full circle and it was really surreal," said O'Hara. "I didn't have it handed to me, I worked for this."

Looking back now, she said the hardest part of the entire process was keeping her big accomplishment a secret until it aired last week.

"I was just like a wreck watching it, like oh my gosh I'm watching me, there's my backyard," she said, from that backyard at her Mooresville home. "We were all like, our eyes were glued to the TV [and when ] I came on and the second they show my face, everyone was like ahhh!"

She's been watching the show since she was 6 and was determined to make it onto the show, after not making it past the first audition on two other TV shows: The Voice and America's Got Talent.

"With American Idol I didn't really know what to expect," she said. "I knew it was my dream and I knew that I wanted to fight for it with everything that I had."

And she sure left a lasting impression.

Popstar judge Katy Perry who told O'Hara that she had "an exceptional voice," after her rendition of Adele's "When We Were Young" on the piano.

"She said to me after I performed that she felt like I was one of the only people who she really connected with all day," O'Hara said.

The next step is to make it passed the Hollywood week auditions and onto the live shows as a final contestant.

Hollywood week begins Monday evening on ABC.​