Good News Fridays: ‘Childhood Sweethearts’ From Mountain Brook, Alabama, Compete On ‘The Amazing Race’

By Nathan Young on September 23, 2022

Welcome to the Good News Fridays segment! Each week here on Geek Alabama, Good News Fridays will feature something good, wholesome, positive, and overall something great. After a long and stressful week, we all need something good to read or watch on Fridays! Enjoy a heartwarming post below!

Though only in their mid-20s, Abby Garrett and Will Freeman have a long history together.

They grew up down the street from each other in the Cherokee Bend section of Mountain Brook, Garrett often playing with Freeman’s little sister. At about age 16, things changed, and the lifelong friends, spurred on by their friends, became boyfriend and girlfriend, eventually attending the University of Mississippi together.

Along the way, watching CBS’ “The Amazing Race” together became a routine, and when the show’s 34th season premieres Wednesday night at 9 on CBS, Garrett and Freeman are one of the 12 teams competing for the $1 million prize.

“When Will and I started dating, I told him that he and I had to watch the show I loved together,” Garrett says. “We talked about it for eight years and sent in an audition video in 2020.”

And then?

Crickets. “We sent it off and never heard anything for two years,” Freeman says.

And then?

“I got this call out of the blue from New York, and the guy said, ‘Hey, it’s Danny from “The Amazing Race,”’ and I just started screaming,” Garrett says.

After graduating from Ole Miss, Garrett and Freeman went their separate ways, both to grad schools (he got his Master of Accounting at the University of Missouri, and she studied business analytics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and as a couple. By the time they applied for “The Amazing Race,” though, they were back together and ready for the adventure.

“We’ve truly been best friends for 15-20 years, and I couldn’t imagine doing this with anyone else,” Garrett says.

In promos for the new season, “The Amazing Race” calls Freeman and Garrett “childhood sweethearts.”

The show, in which teams compete against each other in a worldwide scavenger hunt, of sorts, scratches both Garrett’s and Freeman’s itches to travel.

“That’s a big passion of mine,” he says. “The idea to go do it with someone I really love was exciting.”

The duo can’t say much about their time filming “The Amazing Race,” but they say none of it disappointed and that they remain “superfans” of the show.

“I would describe it as a roller coaster,” Garrett says. “You get the call that you’re on the show, and then the stress sets in. All of a sudden I’m standing in front of (host Phil Koeghan) and I’m having an out-of-body experience.”

Garrett and Freeman now live in Boston, but friends and family are still in Birmingham, and they are, too, for Wednesday’s premiere. They’ll be watching at a viewing party at Cahaba Brewing.

Like the rest of the fans of “The Amazing Race,” they’ll be watching this season for the first time.

“We’re pretty pumped to watch it,” Freeman says.

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