CALHOUN COUNTY, AL — When Season 39 of CBS’s The Amazing Race premieres this fall, viewers across the country will watch 13 teams set out on a race spanning more than 25,000 miles. In Calhoun County, many viewers will have a particular team to cheer for: Daisha Wilks and Dalton Hamby.
Wilks and Hamby, an Alabama-based couple who both work as videographers, were officially revealed Wednesday as part of the Season 39 cast. The new season premieres Sept. 30 on CBS and will send contestants through 13 cities in nine countries across five continents, with a $1 million prize awaiting the winning team. The season begins in Vancouver, Canada, and will include the show’s first-ever visit to Albania.
The season will also introduce a significant change to the competition. For the first time, all 13 teams will begin the race with an Express Pass. Each team must decide when to use its pass, with all passes required to be played by the end of the sixth leg.
For Wilks and Hamby, however, the journey to The Amazing Race began long before they reached the starting line.
From Jacksonville State to Traveling the World
Wilks grew up in Flat Rock and attended Jacksonville State University, where she earned a master’s degree in biology and worked as a graduate teaching assistant.
Hamby is from Weaver and also attended Jacksonville State, earning a bachelor’s degree in emergency management. After college, he moved to Gulf Shores for work but ultimately decided the job was not for him and returned to Calhoun County to pursue videography.
It was while Hamby was working at Jacksonville State’s recreation center that the two met.
Their relationship officially began near the end of 2023.
“He slid into my DMs at the end of 2023 and we went on a first date very shortly after that and we’ve been connected at the hip since then,” Wilks told the Calhoun Journal.
Within six months, the new couple made a decision that would foreshadow the much larger adventure awaiting them: they traveled to Southeast Asia together for three months.
For Hamby, who was adopted and is Filipino, the trip also offered an opportunity to connect with his heritage.
“I wanted to experience a once in a lifetime experience, and I wouldn’t have done it with anybody else,” Hamby said. “And I’m so grateful that Daisha could be in my life.”
Wilks said Hamby had talked about wanting to make the trip, and she encouraged him not to wait.
“He said he always wanted to go and we booked a ticket within the next week because I told him, you know, life’s too short to wait for the perfect time,” she said. “Let’s do it now.”
That willingness to take a chance ultimately became part of the couple’s path to The Amazing Race.
An Audition They Never Expected to Go Anywhere
After returning home from another trip, this time a road trip through Europe, Wilks’ mother approached the couple with a suggestion: audition for The Amazing Race.
“She said, ‘Will y’all please make an audition video for The Amazing Race? I really think that they would like y’all,'” Wilks recalled.
They agreed.
The couple went outside, set up a camera, recorded an audition video and submitted it in September 2024.
Then they went on with their lives.
“We really didn’t think that we had much of a chance of getting picked,” Wilks said. “We did not think that two kids from small-town Alabama would even have their audition video watched.”
Months passed without a response.
Then, near the end of February 2025, Wilks and Hamby were traveling in Laos when an unexpected email arrived in the middle of the night.
It said The Amazing Race.
Hamby’s initial reaction was disbelief.
“I looked at her and I was like, ‘This is a scam. This isn’t real,'” he recalled.
It was real.
The email led to a phone call, FaceTime interviews and what the couple described as an intense and lengthy audition process.
Eventually, the two people who had submitted an audition video at the urging of Wilks’ mother learned they had been selected to compete for $1 million on one of television’s longest-running reality competition series.
“Getting that confirmation that you’re going to get to have this once-in-a-lifetime experience with the person that you love — having the experience is one thing, but getting to do it with your person, it’s a whole other thing,” Wilks said.
Calhoun County Became Their Training Ground
Once the excitement of being selected settled in, the couple had another realization: they needed to prepare.
Much of that preparation happened in Jacksonville.
“We have to exercise, we got to train, and the majority of our training happened in Jacksonville,” Hamby said.
They ran stadiums, ran outdoors, worked out and practiced puzzles throughout the community.
“Everywhere, we did puzzles everywhere in Jacksonville,” Hamby said. “So that was like our little practice ground.”
Both also entered the competition with athletic backgrounds. Wilks grew up in the Pisgah area as an athlete, while Hamby competed in athletics at Weaver.
They knew they were competitive.
What they did not yet know was what would happen when that competitive side was combined with international travel, cameras, unfamiliar challenges and the possibility of winning $1 million.
A Test of Their Relationship
While Wilks and Hamby cannot reveal what happened during individual legs of the race before those episodes air, they can talk about what the overall experience taught them.
For Wilks, one of the biggest lessons involved their relationship.
“It put mine and Dalton’s relationship to the test,” she said. “They say traveling will test any relationship. Well, we had traveled, but we had never traveled under that stressful of a situation where a $1 million is up for grabs and it’s going to be recorded on national television.”
They were also still a relatively new couple.
“It teaches you a lot about yourself and it teaches you a lot about the relationship,” Wilks said. “It’s a make or break.”
There is at least one piece of information they can reveal about what happened after the race.
“We’re engaged now,” Wilks said.
The emotional challenges began even before the first leg.
Wilks said that after the contestants were flown out for the race, the reality of what they were about to do became overwhelming. Without access to her phone to speak with her parents and facing the magnitude of the experience, she experienced significant anxiety and had a panic attack the first night.
Having Hamby beside her, she said, mattered.
“Just having Dalton by my side, it’s very comforting,” Wilks said. “The race is just — it’s a hard experience, and it puts you in a very stressful state of mind.”
Hamby said the competition reinforced how well the two could balance one another.
“When she was at a 10, I was her 90,” he said. “But there were also times whenever I was at a 10 and she was my 90.”
Viewers, he said, will have an opportunity to see that dynamic during the season.
“We really supported each other in ways that you couldn’t do anywhere else,” Hamby said.
Asked whether either regretted accepting the opportunity, the answer was clear.
“No regrets,” Wilks said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and the fact that I got to do it with Dalton just makes it even better. I would do it 10,000 times again.”
Calhoun County Will Watch Together
The couple’s experience will not end when the episodes begin airing.
The Calhoun Journal will host a public Season 39 launch party on Wednesday, Sept. 30, at The Roost on the Square in Jacksonville, giving local residents an opportunity to gather and watch Wilks and Hamby begin their televised journey.
Jacksonville Mayor Mark Jones and Weaver Mayor Jeff Clendenning are expected to participate in the event.
The launch party will be open to the public, allowing the communities that helped shape Wilks and Hamby — and served as their training ground — to watch the first episode together.
After the premiere, the Calhoun Journal will continue following their journey throughout the season.
Following each episode, Wilks and Hamby will provide a behind-the-scenes recap with the Journal, discussing their experiences and offering additional perspective on what viewers saw once they are permitted to discuss the events of that episode.
The couple also plans to produce video recaps through their own online platform, drawing on their professional videography experience.
“We’re so excited and we can’t wait to give recaps as the season [airs],” Wilks said.
For Hamby, the opportunity is about more than appearing on television.
He said that during the casting process, the couple told producers they wanted their experience to encourage people from communities like Weaver, Jacksonville and the surrounding area to take chances of their own.
“We want to inspire small-town communities like ours to take that leap of faith, even if it’s going into a relationship or going for that job,” Hamby said.
Their own path illustrates that idea.
A relationship that started with a social media message led to a first date. Within months, it led to three months in Southeast Asia. A suggestion from Wilks’ mother led to an audition video they never expected anyone to watch. Months later, an email they initially thought was a scam arrived while they were in Laos.
Then two people with deep ties to Calhoun County found themselves on The Amazing Race.
For Wilks, that makes the upcoming season feel like something the community can share.
“Getting on the show and just having this opportunity for us, it feels like more than just me and Dalton won,” she said. “We feel like small-town Alabama won.”
And beginning Sept. 30, they will finally be able to take Calhoun County along for the race.
“We all get to watch this together,” Wilks said. “We’re all Team Small-Town Alabama — Team Daisha and Dalton.”
