Finding someone to root for on CBS's most popular reality competitions won't be hard for Floridians come Wednesday night.
Two castmates on the newest season of The Amazing Race and one from Survivor all call Tampa Bay home. Each auditioned separately, and none knew each other prior to filming — a remarkable coincidence, even for a market that has produced as many reality TV stars as Tampa.
"Both casts were announced at the same time," said Carolyn Rivera, a 52-year-old accounting executive who will appear in Survivor's 30th season. "I thought, 'Wow, three of us are from Tampa Bay. Now, we're all friends on Facebook. But I'd never met any of them before."
Joining Rivera in prime time Wednesday night are Hayley Keel, a 28-year-old emergency room registered nurse at All Children's Hospital in St. Petersburg; and Jeffrey Weldon, 26, who left his sales job in Tampa to join The Amazing Race. In a new twist for the show, both Keel and Weldon teamed up with strangers to race around the world as part of couples on blind dates.
"It was a lot of pressure," said Keel, who was paired with yet another Floridian, 31-year old U.S. Navy doctor Blair Townsend of Amelia Island. "I decided to just focus on what was most important at the time, which was getting through this race together and winning the money. I wanted him to show me what he had, and then later I'd worry about whether I liked him."
After the race ended, Keel kept in contact with both her partner and Weldon.
"To go all the way to the show to meet a girl from my neck of the woods was great. I'm always in St. Pete and we hang in all the same places, so it was a wonder that we'd never met before," said Weldon, who is originally from Hernando County. "Since then we've seen each other quite a few times. We have plans to watch the show together with friends at Ferg's."
Having multiple local contestants on the same season of a reality competition is rare but not unprecedented. In 2006, following a casting call at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, Gina Choe and Mollie Sue Steenis-Gondi made the cast of America's Next Top Model. In 2012, singers Shannon Magrane and Jeremy Rosado became finalists for American Idol after receiving their tickets to Hollywood at an audition in Savannah, Ga.
The Amazing Racers didn't find out about Rivera until after filming for both shows ended.
Rivera, a vice president of learning and development at H&R Block, is a native New Yorker who moved to Tampa 15 years ago. In the months since returning from Survivor, she has been transferred to Kansas City, Mo., though her husband and adult children remain in Florida. She had been a superfan of Survivor since the show's first season in 2000.
"It wasn't easy. I'd sent in tape after tape for the past four years to get on the show," Rivera said. "After I made my last one, I was already thinking up ideas for the next one."
She wouldn't need those, though, because casting directors called her last year and offered a place on the new season, dubbed Survivor: Worlds Apart, which pits white-collar executives against blue-collar workers and "no-collar" creative types in competition for the $1 million grand prize.
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Explore all your options"My friends and the people I work with know me and know I love the show," she said. "I told them I was taking a leave of absence for personal reasons, and when I came back and the cast was announced, they were all like 'I knew it!' "
As for her experience on the show? "I think 100 percent it's the best season the show has ever had."
Keel had made an audition tape for The Amazing Race with one of her male friends shortly after moving to Florida from her native Ohio about a year and a half ago. "I moved to St. Pete for a guy I was dating," she said. "We were together for six months after I came down before we broke up. I loved it here, though, so I just stayed."
Producers saw her audition tape and asked if she'd be interested in doing the show but as a part of a blind dating couple. Of course, she was game.
"I was hoping that my partner could handle things related to animals and wild animals, because I'm not good with that," Keel said. "And I took a class to learn how to drive a manual transmission, because you see that a lot on the show, but I was still uncomfortable with it, so I just hoped my partner could do it."
For Weldon, The Amazing Race was his first trip out of the country. He's never even been to Las Vegas, the hometown of his blind date partner, a professional dancer.
"It was the right time in my life to do something like this," he said. "I've always wanted to travel, but there was never any time because of school or work. Auditioning for the race was the opportunity of a lifetime."