David and Mary Conley of Stone, Kentucky won over the hearts of America with their gutsy performance in last season’s Amazing Race, and returned to this year’s Amazing Race All-Stars to prove that they could compete with the best. Unfortunately, they came up a little short in the end, and were the fourth team to be eliminated last night. They were kind enough to stop by and discuss their experience on The Amazing Race with us earlier today.
BuddyTV: What made you guys interested in racing again so soon after your first season?
Mary: It was in September they called us and they said, “We’re going to do an Amazing Race: All Stars, do you want to be a part of it?” There wasn’t even any thinking, we automatically said yes.
Can you talk about how your life changed after being on The Amazing Race the first time?
Mary: Our life completely changed.
In what way?
Mary: Wow, in every way. It’s like a year ago, you could go around the world invisible, nobody would ever know you’re there and now, everybody knows us. It’s like our viewpoints on so many things have changed. We’re small-town people, so there’s a lot of things in cities that we’ve never been exposed to and now we are.
Even just going to China was wonderful. Being able to get on an airplane and go to another country was the best thing in the world.
Is it ever difficult, being recognized everywhere?
Mary: No, no. Me and David like it.
What was easier and what was harder about this season (All-Stars) compared to your first season?
David: I felt that, physically, the challenges on our season, season ten, were much harder that what we faced on All-Stars. Physically, it was just much more demanding. On All-Stars though, the mental part of it was much harder. They really got you mentally, put you through the ringer. But, the physical challenges, I thought, weren’t nearly as hard because last season they did put a hurt on you and your body with the challenges.
Who is an underrated team on All-Stars that we may not have be impressed with so far, but who we should look out for as the season goes along?
Mary: From both of our seasons, I can tell you that Dustin and Kandace are competitors to be reckoned with. They are really good, and will really fight it out.
David: We even told the rest of the teams, “Look out for those girls.”
Mary: And, of course, you all know Rob and Amber, but they really are a tough team.
From last night or throughout the season, was there anything that was edited out about you guys that you wish they had shown?
Mary: No, I don’t think so, I think the editing, wow, they’ve got the hardest job on the show to make this 24 hour thing, 24 hours a day, 28-30 days and make it into a one hour show every week. It’s the hardest job to do and I think that they are awesome to be able to do what they do.
David: The people of The Amazing Race are the stars. They put the show together and really you call it editing, they do edit it, but they get you on camera, so the camera won’t lie.
Mary: It’s awesome to think about what these people do behind the scenes and then to see it produced, wow! We’ve seen everything in the last year. You run the race and you never know how in the world they put it on TV and now it’s pretty cool to know that wow, it was amazing.
David: Now you can watch past season and be like, “Well now I know why they’ve done that.” Now we look at it and we know why we did that, we know why we had to sleep for three days. There’s a lot of things that sitting at home, you don’t know about the race but the race is great and just the people who run it and produce it need a lot more credit.
What would you say was your favorite destination in both of your seasons?
Mary: My favorite destination of both seasons was Chile. There was one point when we were driving so far away; we were so lost. We were on the road between two volcanoes and it was just the most beautiful sight that anybody could ever imagine. We got to drive through the Valley of the Moon, which to me was just like being on the moon. We were in the driest desert on the earth and that’s right there in Chile. We were telling the producers when we left that the tourism people in Chile don’t understand that, wow, people of America have no idea what beauty is down there in Chile. Maybe that’s why it’s so beautiful, because nobody knows that it’s there. Once people find out something they’re going to go down there and destroy it.
David: If you ever want to take your kids to see the moon, just take them to Chile.
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