Race's Millie and Chuck Speak! (2023)

It's been several months since Millie and Chuck were eliminated from The Amazing Race (their swan song aired last Thursday), but the couple still can't quite get over the mistakes they made on their nail-biting sprint to the finish against rival team Jon and Kelly. "We think about it every single day," moans Chuck. "We need psychotherapy to deal with it," Millie adds jokingly. Here, America's best-known virgins discuss the race and their relationship.

TVGO: First thing's first: Are you two still a couple? The final moments of the episode implied that your future together was somewhat in doubt.
Chuck: We are still together and we're working things out right now. You don't have enough time, believe me.
Millie: When you're racing, you feel like, "Oh my gosh, we are so mean to each other, so we must be wrong for each other." Then you come back and watch the show and you see that other couples are being a lot meaner. And you think: "Maybe we are good for each other." I think our personalities in real life compliment each other, but there were definitely times when the race magnified our differences.

TVGO: Has watching the show helped you to re-examine your relationship?
Millie: It's a good experience if you look at it positively. Doing reality TV — even if it sometimes isn't completely accurate — is a good way to study yourself. I've learned a lot from it individually, but it's also shown me things about my relationship with Chuck, things that I didn't realize were positive about us, as well as things that were negative. What do you think, Chuckie?
Chuck: I'll ditto that. Now that it's all said and done, I think you can look at it a little more objectively. Yes there is some editing involved, but there are definitely some truthful details about Millie and myself in there.
Millie: The show has created this drama in our life that we can learn from and has also brought us to a huge point in our relationship. We are still together right now, but after the summer we're either going to talk about marriage or move on. We were at this point a year ago, and then we sent our audition tape in and this whole thing started happening. So it kind of extended these issues that we were dealing with a year ago to now.

TVGO: Were relations between you and Kelly and Jon as frosty as the series made it appear?
Chuck: Well, they never talked like that to our faces, so we really didn't know what they were saying about us — although Millie did have some intuition. It's a competitive situation though, so whatever.
Millie: He doesn't take it too personally. There were a couple times where Jon made some comments to me. It was never anything about my mole, I didn't know that was going on. I would love to say it doesn't hurt my feelings, but it did. It's hard to watch. But in retrospect I think that's just part of the race. You have to go in expecting it. We didn't have any bad feelings towards Kelly and Jon, but I also never trusted them. I just had a bad vibe about them. When I got back home, I actually said that I might have misjudged them. In the first few episodes they seemed very nice and positive. Then the mole thing came out and I thought, "No, I didn't misjudge them."

TVGO: Aside from the personal stuff, what were the hardest challenges of the race?
Chuck: The toughest challenge was probably what you saw in last Thursday's episode, throwing those palm nuts in back of the truck. We were both tired and they were extremely heavy. Actually, I don't know if the activity was that difficult or if we were just so drained at that point. I struggled with the bow and arrow challenge too. All the arrows were so small and I couldn't pull the bow straight back.
Millie: He actually did very well on that challenge. Phil Keoghan said that Chuck was the fastest one to complete it. The other two guys were there with a significant time lead, and Kelly looked like she finished it quickly, but we actually had to wait the longest for her. They tried to make Chuck look like he was having problems he didn't really have.

TVGO: Knowing what you know now, what's the one change you would make if you were to run the race over again?
Millie: We tried to strategize before the race, but I think we would have to have some definite rules. I didn't get enough rest and I think that affected my performance. We had said that I was going to be the one to do the research on the pit stops. It really helps to do that, but towards the end I was too exhausted. If we were to race again, I couldn't be the sole researcher. We'd have to split that up and do more teamwork at the pit stop.
Chuck: We would also both study map reading a little more. And I would teach Millie maybe how to drive stick shift.

TVGO: What's a moment we didn't see in the finished series that you wish had been included?
Millie: You didn't get to see how strongly some of us became friends and were rooting for each other as much as you can in this kind of situation. I think that would be of huge interest to the fans.
Chuck: Also seeing more of the times where Millie was positive and kinder. She can be a little pushy but they definitely were spinning her to be mean at times. They were also spinning me to be physically a little slower than I think I am.

TVGO: Finally, it must be asked: Are you both still virgins?
Millie: Yes, yes. (Laughs). For all the fans out there who thought we sent in an application with a big "V" on the front of it, we did not do that. That came out in an interview. Our goal in this was not to become the Chastity Kids. This is a lifestyle we believe in, and we try to live it and advocate it. If we become role models as a result, fine, but that's not what we went into this to do.