Eight years ago, Penn and Kim Holderness could not have imagined a life that would take them digitally and literally around the world, but that’s just what has happened, as fans of “The Amazing Race” will see this season.
In 2013, the couple and their two children made a funny video Christmas card for their families and put it on YouTube. It went viral overnight, and Penn and Kim eventually quit their media jobs and now make funny and inspirational videos and podcasts full time, with more than 4.5 million followers.
Their popularity landed them on the reality TV show “The Amazing Race,” part of which filmed during the global coronavirus pandemic.
Kim Holderness said being on the show has been a longtime dream.
Bucket list opportunity
“We’ve been fans of the show since the very beginning,” she said on the Dec. 14 episode of the couple’s podcast. “We’ve always watched it. … It’s always one of those things that’s been on our bucket list. But it never occurred to me that we’d actually be on it.”
In each season of “The Amazing Race,” 11 teams of two race around the world, completing challenging mental and physical tasks in an effort to win $1 million.
“It’s a famously grueling, very hard show,” Kim Holderness said.
The couple went to Europe in February 2020 to start filming but soon had to return to the U.S. as the coronavirus pandemic spread globally. They thought that was the end of their experience, but show producers made a way for the contestants to finish the race in early 2021.
CBS will air the two-hour premiere of season 33 on Jan. 5. Beginning Jan. 7, the couple will talk about each episode each week in special Friday editions of their podcast.
Fans of the podcast can expect they will bring their same brand of humor, seriousness and faith-based perspective to their reflections on their race experience. Listeners may even learn more about their marriage, the subject of their book “Everybody Fights, So Why Not Get Good at It?”
Those who have enjoyed the funny, family-friendly videos the couple posts to YouTube might imagine the couple gets along well — and they do. But it’s not always easy.
“Not one single marriage in the history of marriages has run perfectly all the time,” Penn Holderness writes. “Disagreements are inevitable when you spend that much time with someone … . So we’ve made it a priority to put in the work required for a healthy marriage.”
In the book, the couple shares advice from their pastor and marriage coach, Christopher Edmonston, who leads White Memorial Presbyterian Church in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Weaving humor into the serious topic of marriage, each chapter offers a specific example of a fight they have undergone and relates both Penn’s and Kim’s perspectives on it. They then share the practical advice Edmonston gave them.
Discussing fights
The first tip was the idea of metacommunication — the practice of looking at how one communicates. Edmonston encouraged the couple to regularly discuss fights and figure out what went right and wrong and what could be done better.
The book explains, “When we sit down to review a fight, we have a cup of coffee and try to get to the bottom of what we were trying to convey in the heat of the moment.”
Honest and frank, the book seeks to help readers become more successful communicators within a relationship.
“Our marriage is a living, breathing, unfinished, imperfect, constantly changing part of our lives, and no matter how deeply and completely we love each other, fighting will always be part of it. With every argument, we learn a little bit more about each other,” they write in the final chapter.
“We’ve been using these techniques for almost a decade now. While we still mess up every single day, knowing that we have the tools to clean up the mess has made us a lot steadier when we do get into it with each other. We say what we mean and trust the other person will love us anyway — and we think that’s worth fighting for.”
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