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Second Place ♥♥♥ TAR13 ♥♥♥ Ken Greene & Tina Greene ♥♥♥

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puddin:
Greenes are Amazing Race winners of a different sort
By Eric Deggans, Times TV/Media Critic

Published Sunday, December 7, 2008 11:28 PM


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Even after the final episode aired Sunday night, it was tough to decide who actually won this fall's edition of CBS' travel competition The Amazing Race.

Technically, that honor fell to brother and sister Nick and Starr Spangler, who were shown leading most of the way through a final race leg that stretched from Moscow to Portland, Ore., where the two met host Phil Keoghan at the finish line and won $1-million. The win capped a competition that spanned 23 days, five continents and nearly 40,000 miles of travel.

But Tampa businesswoman Tina Greene and husband Ken also left the race as winners of a different sort, rekindling an on-the-rocks marriage through the competition and redonning their wedding rings during the finale episode's last moments.

"I've been crying since I saw the end of the show," said Tina Greene, calling from a finale party organized by CBS in New York City on Sunday. "I feel like I let Ken down; if I had been a little more aggressive … maybe we would have won. But when Kenny pulled those rings out, I didn't care about the $1-million." Tina Greene said second-place prize money totaled $25,000.

Ken Greene said he had been carrying their wedding rings around, without Tina's knowledge, for the entire race, certain that he would know whether to pull them out and suggest a recommitment by the time the action finished. Now, after throwing all his belongings in a truck and driving 43 hours to Tampa from San Diego in September, the former pro football player is ready to publicly resume his life with his wife.

"I figured when I pulled the rings out, she had no choice, with all those people around," he said Sunday, laughing about the way he surprised Tina at the finish line with her wedding ring, which she accepted with tears. "And after all we'd been through (on the race), if I didn't win her back now, I never could."

In the show's final episode, Ken Greene let his fellow competitors in on a secret — that he and his wife had been separated before the race began.

"I'm asking you to start this thing all over again," he said then, as tears began to choke up his voice a bit. "And we'll do it right this time."

Twenty-something fraternity brothers Andrew Lappitt and Dan Honig — dubbed Team "Superbad" for their resemblance to the nerds depicted in the movie of the same name — came in a distant third, to the surprise of almost no one, including Lappitt and Honig.

Starting in Moscow, the race's three remaining teams piled onto a flight to the final city, Portland, with each pair after the $1-million prize. But as the groups dashed out of the Portland airport, Team Superbad made a race-ending mistake — picking a cabdriver who had no idea how to reach the landmark they were racing toward.

Instead, the Spanglers and the Greenes sped through the final leg's challenges, separated from each other by minutes during much of the competition. One crucial hitch: a challenge in which teams had to walk across a log suspended 30 feet high; thanks to a fear of heights, Tina Greene got hung up here and the Spanglers pulled ahead.

Now that the competition is over, Ken and Tina Greene each blame themselves — Tina fears her delays on the log cost too much time, Ken frets that he could catch a cab sooner. But despite doubts from friends and fans that getting on a reality show would save their marriage, their time on The Amazing Race seems to have done exactly that.

"I wouldn't do it again, and I wouldn't recommend it," said Ken Greene. "But for us, it looks like it worked out."

http://www.tampabay.com/features/media/article929965.ece

TARAsia Fan:
When Ken pulled the rings out, there was not a dry eye at Stitch. And when he and Tina came over from the CBS viewing party, I told him that.

He said he cried again when he saw it on TV. I told him congratulations, he was the true winner of the race and he said he really believed that.

One of the good people I have to say. :)

banredbeans:
I have to say TarAsia fan I have heard nothing but wonderful things about these two from people who met them this weekend. 
 :cmas9

TARAsia Fan:
Tammy,

That is very true. Ken was very nice to talk with. And I wish I had the chance to meet you at TARCon. I know you could not attend. The Paolos from Family Edition were in attendance at TARCon.

marigold:
An interview with Ken and Tina:

Ken and Tina: The Only Couple Who Actually Repaired Their Relationship In Amazing Race History

Every season there’s at least one romantically involved team that comes on the race to decide whether their relationship has a future. Usually the stress of the competition means the answer is a resounding, “No.” But reformed cheater and ex-NFL player Ken and his often demanding wife Tina proved the happy exception. In the final, they lost the million by a hair. But they won something more important. Their successful partnership on the race inspired Ken to ask Tina to start wearing her wedding ring again. They told fancast how being in a pressure cooker saved their marriage.

How far behind Nick and Starr were you?
Ken: We’ve heard different reports. It was somewhere between five and fifteen minutes. So it really was close. It wasn’t a trick of the editing.
Tina: That made it hard. The emotional part of it, too. But it had a happy ending.

It seemed like the memory challenge was the deciding factor in this leg. What happened there that enabled Nick and Starr to pull ahead?
Tina: I think where Nick and Starr pulled ahead was running back and forth. They were so quick. For some reason I felt I had to walk to get my head around it. We made a few mistakes, but they did too. We were keeping a log and a diary just like they were. The stress of it, and on top of that trying to find different clues, because the last clue for us was way at the back of the hundred and fifty boxes. It took us a long time to get to it. Some of that’s luck, which box you open. Some of it’s memory. And they definitely did a really good job on that task.
Ken: They were very good at everything they did in the last couple legs. But really the race came down to the last task. We were basically neck and neck. They found the dragon right away. [Note: It was a dinosaur. That may have been part of the problem.] We walked away from it. That’s where we really lost a bunch of time. If we were able to do anything again differently, it would have been finding the dragon because we didn’t see it as we got out of the cab and they did. It might have been the young eyes versus the old eyes. Who knows?

Ken, when you took out the rings at the matt and asked Tina to wear them, it was such a beautiful, emotional moment. How long had you been planning that?
Ken: The plans kept changing during the race. One minute I thought I was pulling them out, and the other I was stashing them away. It’s something I had considered and prepared for at the start of the race, think the race would reveal whether we’d be together or whether we should stay apart. As the race continued it became obvious that, even though we had our moments, she was the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. It was a wonderful opportunity for us to share something like that together. Then, at the end, to share it with all the people we came to love over the course of the race.

You, along with Nick and Starr, absolutely dominated this race. What were your secrets to success?
Tina: I think we complement each other well. Ken’s strengths are my weaknesses. My strengths are his weaknesses. His strengths are my weaknesses. One of the strategies we incorporated was getting along with all the teams, trying to gather information at every opportunity. We’re both physically fit even though we’re double their age. We’re both well traveled. We don’t take no for an answer. We just pushed through even when we had out tough moments. We thought we could win the relationship back and the race. We got the more important one I think even though we felt bad not to win the million.

Tina, at several points during the race you helped out other teams. That seemed to be a source of conflict for the two of you. What was your philosophy on helping people?
Tina: It’s kind of who I am. I like to help people. But I wanted them to remember that because we may need their help later. Ken did it too. You just didn’t see it. He told Nick and Starr where the bus station was in Cambodia. We all shared information. Some of it was on TV and some of it wasn’t. It’s difficult when you look as these kids, some of whom are younger than our kids (our youngest is 24) and you see them struggling. If they ask for help, you want to help them. It’s how both of us are. He did get mad at me about Dallas. He was right, too. If they had not lost their passport and money, we probably would have been out.

What happened during that leg? Why did it take you so long to find the clue box in Moscow?
Ken: We were going to take the train and we were told we couldn’t. It was too late. That started out downward spiral. We got on the wrong bus. That was my fault. It turned out to be a trolley with metal wheels not a trolley bus. So we had to go back and repeat that. The very last thing was we got dropped off half a mile from the clue box when everyone else got dropped off right in front. We spent three hours trying to find that clue box. We were running non-stop. That didn’t help us going into the final leg because we’d spent ourselves pretty much physically.

Who did you consider to be your biggest rivals on the race?
Ken: When we came into the race, and we were sizing people up, we thought our biggest threats were going to be Nick and Starr, Mark and Bill, Terrance and Sarah. We thought those groups were going to be real strong and they proved to be.

What were your best and worst moments of the whole race?
Tina: My best moment was when he pulled out the rings at the end. It was a very moving moment for me. The other teams didn’t know we were separated and living on opposite coasts. We felt like they might use that to put a wedge between us. I’ve got to tell you that some of them were shocked. Even the camera men and the sound guy were in tears at the end. Just to see that the teams really thought we loved each other, really thought we got along. And I think they knew us better than the fans did. They all said, “You should have the Ken and Tina show. You guys are hilarious.” My worst moment was climbing the sky tower because it was a beautiful moment but when I got to the top I was scared to death.
Ken: Probably the worst moment for me was [the leg we came in last] when we were so frustrated. We’d done the tasks very well, continued to have poor luck with our taxis. We thought we were going to be eliminated. That was incredibly frustrating. My best moment was her worst moment, when we were at the top of the sky tower. The sun came up over the ocean and it was a very unique and blessed moment.

What inspired the two of you to try out for the race?
Tina: I’ve been a huge fan since the very first promo for Amazing Race One. I watched every season. Ken watched most of them with me. We always said we wanted to do it but because he was in coaching it would have been impossible. He got out of coaching. We were separated. We were seeing each other every month. He came for Thanksgiving and I had seen on the internet that they were taking applications that were due next week. So I just said to him, “Do you want to do this? I think it would be a good strategy for us to spend more time together, to see if we can work well as a team. “ Monday morning before his plane flew out we filled out the application, did the video, just on the fly. We didn’t rehearse it. We didn’t have a script. It ended up being exactly three minutes. On the way to the airport we FedExed it then forgot about it for a while. Ken thought we were definitely going to be picked. I was shocked when they called me. It was definitely a blessing in our life and something we always wanted to do. Now I’m hoping they’ll take all the number two teams from all the seasons and have a race with us.

How have things been for the two of you since the end of the race? Did the connection you forged translate into boring real life?
Ken: Absolutely. We couldn’t go through tougher times then we did on the race. I moved back home in September. We’re continuing to grow together on our relationship. We wanted to take our relationship from a manageable one to a magnificent one.

What advice would you give to other competitors on The Amazing Race?
Tina: That no matter how well prepared you are, it’s overwhelming.
Ken: The most basic issue, which a lot of people don’t do, which shocks me is that you have to be in great shape to do this show. There’s no way that you can be successful unless you’re ready to run.

Link: http://thebiz.fancast.com/2008/12/ken_and_tina_the_only_couple_w.html

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