The Amazing Race season 36 contestants Shane Bilek and Juan Jose Villa Naranjo think the competition made them better partners to their respective wives.
“It made us better husbands … because Juan and I are identical,” Shane exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, May 16, one day after the duo placed second in the CBS reality series.
“We’re the same person,” he continued. “We know what’s going to trigger the other person because we know what triggers ourselves. And so even in some of the stressful moments, we’ll debrief at the hotel room after a leg and be like, ‘Man, my wife’s got to put up with this? Oh, man, maybe I should make adjustments back at home.’ … God bless the wives. They’re patient as all get out.”
Juan and Shane have both become fathers since they met during Air Force flight school. Juan is dad to 3-year-old daughter Sophia, while Shane’s son, Beckham, is 7 months old.
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“Now being fathers and husbands, having that time to kind of share each other’s wisdoms and how we’ve grown in that sense — as opposed to pilot training where all we did was talk about planes — I think it gave us an opportunity to really help each other grow in our friendship as family men,” said Juan.
Although Juan and Shane’s kids haven’t met each other yet, they have high hopes for their future bond.
“Hopefully we can have a wedding here in about 20 years,” Juan joked.
“They’re a match made in heaven. They just don’t know it,” Shane added.
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While Juan and Shane didn’t take home the $1 million grand prize during the Amazing Race finale — Ricky Rotandi and Cesar Aldrete won after dominating all season — they did place first during one leg, winning $5,000 in the process. Shane told Us that the pair knew right away they wanted to use the money to take their wives on a nice trip.
“We were just gnawing at the bit to win a leg, and then when they told us that we won cash, it’s right into a vacation account,” he said.
Juan added that he only had one week at home with his family after the race before he was deployed for a month. “So, as soon as I got back, we hit the beach,” he said.
The twosome spoke often of their families on the show, emphasizing that they were competing for them.
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“Juan and I went into this knowing that every penny that we won was going to our wives, and that’s no joke,” said Shane. “So, when we won that five grand, it was just immediately — like you heard Juan talk about it — like, ‘Oh, we can take the wives wherever.’ And we talked about the wives all the time because they were the reason why we were there.”
Although being away from their families during the race was difficult, Juan and Shane would give it another go if given the chance. And this time, they wouldn’t accidentally drive to a different state during the final leg.
“Hopefully we get another crack at this because this time we’re going to have a little bit more knowledge of the show and we’re going to make some different decisions,” said Shane. “We would just be blessed with an opportunity to run it back and not go to New Jersey.”
