If you happened to catch the Aug. 11 episode of NBC’s summer game show, “Minute to Win it,” you may have seen a familiar face. Emily Tucker Barzee ’02 and her husband, Scott, won $125,000 on the show, hosted by chef and TV personality Guy Fieri. “Minute to Win It” offers contestants the chance to win $1 million if they complete ten challenges using common household items. Each challenge must be completed in 60 seconds.
The Barzees competed in the “Office Romance” episode, which featured challenges involving office supplies. The couple were chosen for the episode in part because of their real-life office romance. They met when Scott was a regional manager for Capital Home Mortgage in Charlotte and Emily, fresh out of Elon, applied for a job as a loan officer. They were married in 2007 and live in Charlotte, where Emily now works for Wachovia and Scott for Bank of America.
Emily, who majored in business with a concentration in finance while at Elon, recently spoke with the Office of University Relations about her experience on the show. After reading the Q&A, click the link to the right to view the full episode of “Minute to Win It.”
How did you hear about the show, and how did you get the opportunity to be on it?
NBC had a commercial and one night my husband saw it advertising the casting call for “Minute to Win It” in Charlotte. He said if he could find a buddy to go with him, he’d like to go. At that point, I had no desire to be on national TV. He recruited a friend to go with him and the three of us went downtown for the casting call. I just went to cheer them on.
After four hours or so of standing in line on a 100-degree day, I figured, “I’ve already spent my whole day here, seems pretty stupid not to give it a try.” By the time we made it to the front of the line, I had filled out an application and jumped on board. Five applicants at a time were put in a panel and each person had 30 seconds to impress the casting coordinator that’s there. Scott and I were grouped together, standing side-by-side, and got to play off one another while introducing ourselves, and at the end, they said to everyone else, “Thanks for coming,” but asked us to stay.
They scheduled us to come back the following day to play some of the games on camera, to see how we worked with the game, our sportsmanship, athleticism, etc.
Again, after we played the games, they said to everyone else, “Thanks for coming,” and then asked us to join them at the Hilton hotel for a casting interview on video that same day. When we left, we were told that if we didn’t hear anything by August, we could assume that they went with someone else.
Three days later, we got a phone call from NBC saying they loved us and asked if we could come out for taping the following week. So, of course, we jumped at the opportunity and took a week off from work. They paid for the flights and the hotel for the week, and all our spending money. They also paid for us to have our best friends, Pepe and Emie, with us.
The only drawback was that I’d had a trip planned to go to Turks and Caicos with my seven best girlfriends, who I went to Elon with, because we all turned 30 this year. Unfortunately, it happened to be the same week as the taping but my friends told me this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and all encouraged me to go.
Did you prepare in advance for the show?
The week before we flew to L.A., at the end of June, we basically sequestered ourselves in our house to practice all the games. We had concert tickets and dinner plans that we canceled and every night that week we played games from the “Minute to Win It” website. Then, when we got out to LA, we were told we’d been cast for a special episode and all the games were geared toward an office theme. So all the practice we’d done up to that point was useless.
They came up with about 24 games for this episode and were going to randomly pick 10 the day of taping. We played all of them for a whole day at a warehouse on the NBC lot. Then they encouraged us to go and try to recreate as many as we could on our own, to practice as much as possible over the next few days in our hotel. There were a few that were impossible to recreate but we went to Office Max and Target for supplies and were able to set up and practice the majority of them.
What was being on the show like for you both?
The only way that Scott and I have been able to describe the day of the shooting was that it felt like an out-of-body experience. We were able to take all of our nerves and redirect them, adrenaline completely took over. It was extremely calming to have each other there. Had I been cast by myself, I would have been a deer in the headlights!
We did the whole show in one big swoop, on the same day and in front of a 300-person live audience. There were no retakes. They don’t stop the camera and say, “Go back and do it again.”
What went through your mind when you saw you’d won $125,000?
It felt surreal, like I was in a dream. There’s no other way to describe it. I just couldn’t believe it was happening to us … and still can’t!
What do you plan to do with your winnings?
We hosted a big viewing party in Charlotte the night the show aired. We rented out a bar near our house and did an open bar and food for all of our friends and family. Even the local news station came! We wanted to do something nice for our friends (Scott keeps joking that is was like our second wedding reception!).
We’re also giving some money to our parents and siblings; Scott has a brother and a sister and I have a brother. In the immediate future, we’re going to use it for a backyard makeover. We’ll put the rest away to start a family.
Looking back on it all, would you do it again?
Absolutely, without a doubt. For successfully completing seven games in seven minutes, that was a pretty nice payday! We’ll never forget the entire experience – it was absolutely wonderful from start to finish and what made it even better was that we got to do it together.