Trish Dunn, “Survivor”

To hear Trish Dunn describe it, the hardest part of her televised experience on CBS’s reality slugfest, “Survivor,” wasn’t bug bites or having to drink a blend of bloody clams and raw eel. It was keeping it all a secret.

During the summer of 2003, while she was fighting for tribal status on a tropical isle (Pearl Islands, Panama) during the “Survivor” filming, her husband and twin daughters back home had to zip serious lip, ducking friends who suspected that something was up. (Mission accomplished: They never cracked, maintaining that Dunn had left town to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity.)

Dunn was voted off the island mid-game, but she soon segued into a new life as a “Survivor” survivor—a celebrity role she now mines as a motivational speaker, mostly at middle and high schools and charity events. “It’s amazing how long the legs are with ‘Survivor,’” the forty-five-year-old Stevensville resident says. “I could work as often as I want” (though she tends to limit her engagements to several a month). And that’s three years out, notes the former sales exec and marathon runner.

Dunn believes it was her marathon experience that earned her the “Survivor” spot, a finalist out of tens of thousands of other people from around the country who auditioned. The videotape she mailed with her application showed her training—as the snow fell—for the Boston marathon, not exactly tropical conditions but an indication of her fitness and tenacity.

“Even though it was mostly a young cast,” Dunn recalls, “a fifty-six-year-old guy and myself were the ones in the best shape. I really thought I was going to win. Hey, I was there for the one million dollars.”

No such luck. Though the top prize eluded her, she did earn a cash award for being a finalist, an appearance on Letterman, and plenty of local recognition, “even in no make-up and a ponytail.” The tiny taste of fame was enough to entice some of Dunn’s “Survivor” cast-mates to move directly to L.A., but for Dunn, the choice was clear: “If you have a family, you go back to your life. Having the wisdom of your forties helps.”

Dunn says the lessons of “Survivor” resemble Robert Fulghum’s famous set of dictums from kindergarten. She recites the rules: “Be nice to everyone, since you never know who’s gonna support you or stab you in the back; be careful whom you say things to; persevere, even when you don’t succeed the first time.”

So what was the hardest thing to do without? “Food,” recalls Dunn. “We were living off a handful of rice a day. And we all craved extreme tastes, like salt or spice. Most people would think we would want turkey and mashed potatoes, but, no, we just really wanted taste.” —C.D.

Gretchen & Meredith Smith, “The Amazing Race”

When Gretchen and Meredith Smith sent a VHS tape and an application to the producers of CBS’s “The Amazing Race,” they did it on a lark. As they filmed themselves outside their Easton home, wearinghiking gear with their kayaks, they declared that old age and treachery would win over youth and inexperience. But when they made the cut to become contestants on the grueling, round-the-world treasure hunt, they realized that reality TV is no laughing matter. “After a couple of episodes, you never thought about being on television, you only thought about getting through the challenge and not coming in last,” says Gretchen.

At ages sixty-six and sixty-nine, the Smiths were the oldest couple ever on the show and were dubbed “Team Geritol” by viewers. Despite sleep deprivation, hunger pangs, and the aches and pains of competition, the Smiths finished a respectable fourth. Overnight, they became heroes to aging baby boomers everywhere, and their faces became known all over the world. Both agree that their time on reality TV changed their lives. “We really got to meet the people,” says Meredith. “How many people in the world would have a chance to go over 40,000 miles at breakneck speed through countries where you didn’t know the language, and you had to rely on your instincts and other people [to get by]?” Recalling their time in Botswana, listening to local people singing, or the day that hundreds of Indians cheered them through the streets, Gretchen says, “The normal tourist does not get to see this.”

The memories the Smiths brought back from their exotic travels were nothing compared to what awaited them at home. “We have received hundreds and hundreds of cards from as far away as Australia and even from a man in a prison in Wyoming telling us what inspirations we were to them and how wonderful we were to each other,” says Gretchen. Shortly after “The Amazing Race” aired, the couple traveled to China and Tibet and were recognized while visiting the Great Wall. They’ve told their story to international media outlets and spoken all over the country. When Tylenol heard Gretchen complaining on the show about her sore knees while climbing a rope ladder in Turkey, they got the couple to endorse its pain medication.

In Easton, they’re still as easy to recognize as the mayor, but they say that their fame is starting to fade. But life will never be quite the same. “It made us stronger as a couple,” says Meredith “It made a lot of senior citizens stand up and take notice that when you get to be sixty or seventy, you don’t need to lay down and wait for the Grim Reaper.” —C.M.

Jamile McGee, “So You Think You Can Dance”

Jamile McGee knew he could dance. Though just twenty-one, he’s been a hoofer for more than a decade. But when he arrived in New York last May for a third round of auditions for Fox TV’s “So You Think You Can Dance,” he had a twinge of doubt. “It was such a huge call-back—thousands of people in line at 6 a.m.,” he recalls. “Intimidating, yeah.” Not to worry. With an impressively deep repertoire of salsa, partner dancing, jazz, hip hop, and freestyling (“what I do best”), his star quality shone through. McGee, whose most recent stage credits were at Anne Arundel Community College, had won a golden ticket to the finals in Hollywood.

The Owings Mills resident auditioned at the suggestion of AACC’s dance company director, who’d heard about the “American Idol”-type spinoff and urged him to go for it. McGee danced through an intense week of studio rehearsals, interviews, and made-for-TV dramatics (“They want to see how far they can push you,” he says) before placing third on the ultimate episode. Moments later, it seemed, job offers were pouring in.

“I signed with an agency in New York first, and I had an offer to play Richie in A Chorus Line,” he says. “Who wouldn’t want to do Broadway? But I turned it down. I told myself I’d come back to New York and headed for L.A.” There, squeezed into a two-bedroom apartment with six roommates (all dancers from the show), he survived on a steady diet of hot dogs and high-pressure auditions.

“I didn’t expect to get jobs as fast as I did ’cause it’s so competitive,” McGee says, but they came quickly: music videos with Chris Brown and Rihanna and then a plum Pepsi commercial with Mariah Carey. “National commercials are the best,” he explains happily. “You get residuals.”

The other bonus? “I get to work with the best choreographers, and they remember my face. Now it’s ‘Wow! I’m bookin’ jobs with people I look up to!’”

This October, McGee will lead the USA Championship Hip Hop Team at an international competition in Germany. “Straight-up, raw hip hop,” he promises. “They’ve never had that before.” In the meantime, there’s not a lot of time for dancing for fun. “Every once in a while,” he admits, “I go to a club, just to ‘talk to the dance floor.’” —C.D.

Sarah Raley & Mark Dale, “The Today Show’s Hometown Wedding”

When everyone in America is invited to your wedding, the last you thing you need is a stuck zipper on your silk and satin couture gown. Fortunately, bride Sarah Raley survived the snag—but the crisis left her without a second to catch a final glance in the mirror. “I actually didn’t even get a chance to see myself on my wedding day,” she says. More than six million other people did, however, as Sarah and her fiancé, Mark Dale, tied the knot on “The Today Show’s Hometown Wedding,” broadcast from Stevensville’s Chesapeake Bay Beach Club on Sept. 16, 2005. In the nine weeks preceding the big day, Mark and Sarah appeared live on “Today” each Monday to learn how viewers had voted on the decisions for their big event, from bridesmaids’ dresses to the honeymoon destination.

“Everyone wants to know: How did you feel about someone else planning your whole wedding for you?” Sarah Raley-Dale says. “But ‘Today’ made it really personal for us. Every single week, they surprised us” (as when the model for the chosen tuxedo turned out to be NFL linebacker Lavar Arrington—they’re huge Redskins fans). The couple says they’ve remained pals with the cast and crew, visiting New York regularly, and have promised to be available as needed for future “Today” segments.

The 180 friends and family who attended were dazzled by the show’s celebrities. “Our guests went berserk at the wedding—I can’t even guess how many pictures Katie [Couric] and Al [Roker] ended up in,” Dale laughs.

After a nine-day wedding trip to the Maldives, the couple settled back into life in Lusby, Md., but their new pop star status kept things interesting. “We’d go together to the grocery store, and it would turn into an hour-and-a-half trip, with people stopping to congratulate us and telling us ‘We voted for you!’” she recalls. “After a while, we decided we’d have to go separately—and even then, we’d get stopped. When we went skiing in Wyoming in December, same thing. It’s crazy to go all the way across the country and be recognized.”

A year later, “we still talk about it every day,”she confesses. “We’ll say to each other, ‘We went through that? That happened to us?’ We have yet to sit down and watch the DVD that all our shows are on, and I’m still organizing all the pictures” (done by the same photographer that did John and Caroline Kennedy’s weddings). “I look at them and say, ‘I just can’t believe we did this.’”—C.D.

Steve Dannenmann, ESPN’s “World Series of Poker”

Walking away from Las Vegas with a cool $4.25 million is any poker player’s dream come true. For Steve Dannenmann, it was real life. When the thirty-eight-year-old Severn resident entered ESPN’s “World Series of Poker,” his goals were pretty humble. He wanted to get on television (only the top ten percent of the 5,600-person field gets onscreen), and have fun. To get himself on TV, he toyed with some extreme ideas, even considering wearing a chicken costume while playing. But by the third day, he was already on TV, and winning his way into viewers’ hearts as easily as he won hands.

“The entire time you are sitting there, you’re thinking, ‘OK, don’t do anything stupid because you know that your mother is going to be watching,’” says Dannenmann. Despite the pressure, he tried to keep a carefree attitude and stick to his goal of having fun. He says that keeping a cool head was probably what got him so far. A certified CPA, he also applied many of the business principles and risk-analysis strategies from his professional life to the poker table.

After splitting his second-place winnings with the friend who helped pay his entry fee, Dannenmann returned to Maryland with about $1.3 million (after taxes). “People ask how this has changed my life, and I keep fighting it, saying that it hasn’t,” says Dannenmann. Many of his clients watched his progress on the World Series, anticipating that they’d need to get a new accountant if he won. On the contrary, Dannenmann still works in his CPA business, still plays golf, and goes fishing in his free time. He expects he’ll retire in about fifteen years. The only change is that he no longer takes appointments on Saturday.

While he is adamant that the money hasn’t changed his life, the experience of being on television has. He gets invited to many tournaments now, was invited to the Playboy mansion, where he met star Jason Alexander, and receives e-mails from all over the world through the website he established, financialace.com. He is recognized in airports and on the street—even at a Chicago Cubs game, though wearing a hat and sunglasses.

At a tournament, he asked racecar driver Jeff Gordon if he could have his picture taken with him.

“I said, ‘I’m Steve,’ and he said ‘I know, I watch you on TV all the time,’” Dannenmann recalls. “The world watches Jeff Gordon, and Jeff Gordon knows who Steve is.” —C.M.

Tina Swenson, “The Price Is Right”

As a child, Tina Swenson played “The Price Is Right” with her sisters, placing cards with dollar figures in the spokes of their bikes and spinning them like the big wheel on the show, which sends a contestant to the Showcase Showdown.

So years later, when the opportunity came to go to Burbank for a taping of the show, she seized it.

Swenson sat in the audience with about thirty others from her husband’s Naval base, wearing matching “Go Navy” shirts. She was called to “Contestant’s Row” near the end of the program. “It was so surreal and I was kind of shocked,” she says.

“I remember thinking, ‘I hope I look excited,’ and when I actually watched the show I thought, ‘Oh, yeah, I looked like a crazy woman.’”

When Swenson got on stage with Bob Barker, she was asked to guess the price of a trip to Cancun. Luckily, she had recently priced a trip to Cozumel for she and her husband. She won and eventually made it to the Showcase Showdown, where she won a number of prizes, including a Jeep Wrangler and a bedroom set. “I remember thinking, ‘My sister is never going to believe this.’” “I don’t know why, but I ran over and jumped on the bed. My friends and family get a kick out of that, and say it’s their favorite part of the show.”

In a small town, notoriety is quickly assigned. On the Navy base, word of Swenson’s win spread fast and she made the cover of the local newspaper. Her mother bragged for weeks to anyone who would listen. But the fame was fleeting. “I think this taught me that notoriety, no matter what you do, is short-lived,” says Swenson, who is now a stay- at-home mom in California, Md. “The best part for me was calling my sisters and listening to their reaction.” Swenson took the trip to Cancun with her husband, and they sold many of the prizes they couldn’t use—like the Jeep. What remains of that fleeting moment of fame is one heck of a story.

“It wasn’t about the money or the prizes or even being on television, although that was fun. I like that I have this fun, unique story I only share with a few people,” she says. “My sister and I dreamt of being on the show when we were kids; I guess this taught me that little kid dreams can come true.” —C.M.