jqGrid - filtering cells with html

Question

I'm trying to use jqGrid's (3.7.2) toolbar filters, but some of my cells contain HTML that interferes with the filtering. My idea was to virtually strip the HTML just before comparing it to the search query, but I couldn't find where the comparing actually happens. Does anyone know how to do such thing? Any better ideas?

Thanks!

tableToGrid("#mytable", { height: 500 });
jQuery("#mytable").jqGrid('filterToolbar', {
    stringResult: true,
    searchOnEnter: false
});