A ‘couple’ of competitors

For former Mountain Brook residents Abby Garrett and Will Freeman, deciding to compete in the popular CBS series “The Amazing Race” was a no-brainer.

“We love ‘The Amazing Race.’ I’ve been watching it with my family forever, and I kept saying I was going to do it with my brother,” Garrett told Village Living. “Then Will and I started dating, and I was like, ‘Hmm. You’d make a pretty good partner on this show.’ So I made him start watching it with me.”

The couple has a lot of history. They share that they were friends first and often spent time playing at one another’s houses as young children and carpooling together throughout elementary and middle school.

“We’ve grown up together, but we took it to the dating stage when we were in high school,” Freeman said. “Abby really started dating me because she thought I’d be a good ‘Amazing Race’ contestant,” he laughs.

So how did the couple go from talking about auditioning for the show to actually auditioning for it?

“For years, we talked about applying, but we never actually did it. Then came COVID, and there was nothing going on, so we thought, let’s do it,” Freeman said.

The couple now lives in Boston, where Garrett works as a data scientist and Freeman is an accountant.

“We were going to make a new video because there was a blizzard in Boston, and we didn’t have anything else to do, but then we got a callback,” Garrett explained.

After they completed their undergraduate studies together at the University of Mississippi, the couple went to separate graduate schools where they obtained master’s degrees. Garrett felt that her studies helped the couple while they were competing on the show.

“I spend all day problem-solving and creating a plan and then re-creating that plan when something goes wrong,” Garrett said. “That’s basically what you do on the show.”

Garrett and Freeman said that in addition to their audition video, there were several interview components for the producers to get to know their relationship dynamic. They also said it seemed like it moved pretty fast in some instances, but between conversations with the team from CBS, it also felt like the audition process moved sluggishly.

So how did the couple prepare for what was to come during filming?

“I think, preparation-wise, because we watched the show, we knew there would be a ton of navigating involved,” Freeman explained. “You should be in pretty decent shape, and you want to know a bit about geography and languages because you never know where you’re going to go.”

“And meditating,” Garrett chimed in. “We did a little bit of that to try and right our mindset. We are so competitive; we had conversations like, ‘We really need to focus on making this fun. Even if we aren’t doing well, we need to make this fun.’”

Competing together as a couple, especially on national television, can sometimes reveal relationship difficulties. However, the Mountain Brook High School alums said that wasn’t the case for them.

“Ultimately, we felt like we would work well together. We came out of it feeling like we balanced each other out and came together well as a team,” Freeman said.

“I’m more competitive than Will is,” Garrett shared. “But, at the end of the day, if one of us is really down, we’re not going to beat the other one up. It’s a healthy level of competition. It drives us to be better more than anything. We’re really competitive with everyone else. This [show] was the first instance of us truly competing together in something, and that was fun.”

The high school sweethearts revealed that when they begin filming, there are really no hints or tips from the crew on what to expect during their season. They were pretty much on their own, so it was up to the couple to figure out their strategy.

“We went back and watched many of the past seasons. We also rewatched the first episode of several past seasons because we didn’t want to be the first couple eliminated,” Garrett said.

Are there any other competition shows on the horizon for Garrett and Freeman? “This is my favorite genre of TV, and ‘The Amazing Race’ is my favorite, but lately, they’ve reworked [the MTV version] of ‘The Challenge’ and I also love ‘Survivor,’ so those would be interesting to me,” Garrett said.

“Abby loves ‘Survivor,’ and I’d love to watch her on that, but I’m more into trivia,” Freeman said.

When season 34 of “The Amazing Race” premiered on Sept. 21, Garrett and Freeman said their group message with the other contestants from their season became active again.

“It’s a supportive group,” Freeman said. “It’s such a unique experience to all of a sudden have the focus of however many millions of people are watching the show. It’s hard to recognize and deal with at first, so having that group where we could say, ‘Oh, we’re all dealing with this for the first time,’ and then share messages of ‘You got it!’ or ‘We’re proud of you!’ was really nice to have.”

The support at home wasn’t too far behind them, either. Garrett said that her family and friends all gathered at Cahaba Brewing for the premiere launch party of the 34th season.

“That was fun because we had several high school friends come, and my church came out, and several family friends. We are still from Birmingham, but we live in Boston right now, so I’m sure we’ll do something with that group when we get back,” Garrett said .

The couple said that they were able to keep in touch with their family minimally while filming, but that they intentionally left out some details to make their show watching experience more exciting.

Freeman said, “Generally, they’ve all been very supportive and nervous for us. There was a little bit of anxiety, but everyone has been so supportive.”

“My brothers were like, ‘You better have done well!’ because they know how competitive I am,” Garrett joked.

To find out how far the couple makes it on the show, “The Amazing Race” airs Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on CBS.