Will they stay in local news? The KEYT Santa Barbara news duo of Kelsey Gerckens and Joey Buttitta prevailed in CBS’s around-the-world reality show The Amazing Race Friday, winning the million dollar prize.
“I got to experience so many different cultures,” Gerckens said ahead of the finale. “We were in India, a place I never thought I’d get to go in my life. So me, as a person, I have completely changed because of this experience on The Amazing Race.”
“I’d never been out of the country before,” Buttitta said. “I never had a passport, so to be able to make it through the entire Amazing Race and go to 10 countries, it was an incredible experience.”
Buttitta is an anchor on KEYT’s morning show while Gerckens is a dayside reporter. They made their debut on The Amazing Race in September, along with a pair of paparazzi and two members of the TMZ news staff. The TMZ crew were eliminated early on, but the paparazzi made it to the finale.