Exclusive: Chuck McCall and Wynona McCall talk 'The Amazing Race' (Part 2)

Chuck McCall and Wynona McCall were eliminated from The Amazing Race during Sunday night's eighth broadcast of the CBS reality competition's 22nd season.


The "Married Couple" became the fifth team eliminated from the around-the-world competition after they arrived at the Race's seventh Pit Stop at the Bodmi Snowboard and Ski School in Zurich, Switzerland in last place.

In an exclusive interview with Reality TV World on Monday, Chuck and Wynona talked about their The Amazing Race experience. Below is the concluding portion of the pair's interview. Click here to read the first half.

Reality TV World: When you were at the Pit Stop waiting out your time penalty, Joey Graceffa and Meghan Camarena arrived on the mat and claimed fifth place from you guys. How long into the penalty do you think they arrived? In other words, how long after you got to the Pit Stop do you think they did?

Chuck McCall: Yeah, we estimated it was probably anywhere from 15 to almost 20 minutes. So we were just sitting there saying our prayers, hoping they would be late or something happened to them. But once we saw their heads come bouncing over the hill there, both our hearts sunk.


Reality TV World: Did you guys have any hope it might be a non-elimination leg at that point or were you convinced there was no shot of that happening?

Wynona McCall: Well we were hoping that would be a non-elimination. We had no clue, and we didn't know which team was behind us either. We knew that Joey and Meghan were the last ones on the hill down in front of us, but we didn't know if it was them that hadn't checked in yet.

Chuck McCall: We thought we made a smarter move than them at the bottom of the hill. We took that taxi, spending our last little bit of money. We didn't know if they got a taxi. All we know is when we hit that train station, they said it was about three or four miles to get to that ski school. We looked at each other like, "Are we going to try to jog and run?"

We knew that Meghan and Joey liked to run everywhere they went. They had already outrun us on the beach, and they were both real fit and liked to get out there and run, and we thought we made a smarter move jumping in that taxi. So we were kind of ecstatic when we heard [The Amazing Race host Phil Keoghan] say we were fifth. But then when we heard the penalty...

Reality TV World: How long was that taxi ride for you guys? I'm surprised that Joey and Meghan could walk that distance so quickly to the Pit Stop.


Chuck McCall: Well, it was probably -- I guess that taxi ride for us was probably maybe 15 minutes. The hills over there were kind of crazy. You had to zig back and forth on the roads to get up there, but it was probably a 10-minute ride. But I'm sure it ended up being a 30-minute run for those guys.

Reality TV World: In retrospect, if you had done the cheese task correctly and finished it the way the rules stated, do you think you would've avoided elimination -- or do you think that would've taken you even longer than the 30 minutes you had to wait due to the time penalty?

Wynona McCall: Well we only rolled the cheese those couple of times that you saw on the TV. That's all we rolled it. When they said we could no longer roll it, we had to get the cheese and put it on our sled and then get down the hill. So it didn't really help us or hinder us in rolling the cheese or not rolling the cheese.

Chuck McCall: Yeah, I don't think -- the cheese maybe rolled 20 feet on us. It wasn't rolled through the deep snow anyway.

Wynona McCall: It would roll over and stop, so...


Chuck McCall: So I thought the 30 minutes for the 20 feet it went was kind of extreme for us, but you know, we had to take our licks as they were handed to us.

Reality TV World: When I talked to Pamela Chien and Winnie Sung last week, they agreed that in the very beginning of the Race, they were scared of you, Chuck. They thought you were a scary man because you were smart, fit and had great life experience. They believed you were a Navy SEAL or something like that and called you a "beast." What's your reaction to that, does that surprise you and do you think that's funny?

Chuck McCall: Well, we got a riot out of Pam and Winnie. They accused me of being a Navy SEAL. They were calling me Paul Bunyan. I guess the funny thing that made me laugh was when we hit the one airport, everyone was broke and everyone was kind of begging for money to get a coffee or something.

And Pam told me, she goes, "Chuck, you couldn't beg at the airport." And I was like, "Well, what are you talking about?" She goes, "Because I would throw my purse at you and run if you asked me for money!" (Laughs)

Reality TV World: Wynona, you obviously went through a tough time on the Race with a lot of ups and downs and hardships along the way. When you got eliminated, was there a part of you that was relieved, or were you truly just completely disappointed?


Wynona McCall: No, I was very disappointed. I started off, you know, in it to win it -- the same as Chuck. And I don't know if we can discuss it thoroughly in this interview, but I hurt my leg to start off with. So that was just heartbreaking to start the Race like that, and it just felt like I struggled the entire Race because of my injury.

Reality TV World: Chuck, any relief from your end after your elimination?

Chuck McCall: No, I did not want to get eliminated right there. I thought, you know, if we could've gotten through that leg -- we were never really frontrunners, we were knocking them off one by one from the back of the pack.

When we went to Africa, we probably got a third or fourth [place] there, and it felt good to be in the middle, where we weren't always just fearing elimination. It was nice to be near the front. But no, it was heartbreaking to get eliminated there.

Reality TV World: Chuck, you mentioned in your final words that the Race definitely didn't tear you two apart, but would you say it actually made you closer? Do you think racing together ultimately helped or hurt your relationship once you got back home?


Chuck McCall: I think it definitely helped. I really didn't like to see Wynona get down on herself and shed tears, thinking she couldn't keep up. That tugged on my heartstrings. I don't ever want to see that part of her again. I'm going to work on my love on that side of it and make sure she don't get in that frame of mind again on me.

Reality TV World: How were you two cast on The Amazing Race and would you ever be interested in an all-stars edition if given the opportunity?

Chuck McCall: Most certainly. Yeah, we would love the opportunity to do it again. You would come back so much smarter from the first time around, you know? We really didn't know what we were getting into, what to pack. They don't clue you in on that, but I think the second time around, we could really step up our game.

Reality TV World: Was this your first time applying to get on the show or had you applied in the past?

Chuck McCall: It was actually our first time applying. We tried to get on Season 21, but my dad took ill with cancer and died, so we didn't make 21. They gave us the opportunity to come back for 22. Thank you CBS. We really appreciated it, and we had a great time out there doing it.

Above is the concluding portion of Chuck and Wynona's exclusive interview with Reality TV World. Click here to read the first half.






About The Author: Elizabeth Kwiatkowski