On Saturday, my husband Jamie and I were invited to audition for the Marriage Ref, Jerry Seinfield’s brainchild on NBC.
No, Mom. We’re not on the brink of divorce but we need a comedic mediator for our ongoing dispute:
Jamie’s all-consuming obsession with growing The Great Pumpkin.
The whole thing unfolded almost by accident. When I was driving to my daughter’s Halloween Party on Friday, the hosts of Alice 105.9 were talking about the Marriage Ref’s auditions in Denver that weekend. Casting directors were looking for humorous squabbles that could be resolved by their celebrity panel.
I listened with moderate interest but then something clicked. The inordinate amount of time Jamie spends nurturing The Great Pumpkin is a kooky dispute, on par with past Marriage Ref episodes that included Fonzie the stuffed dog and a stripper pole in a bedroom.
I am not proud of this.
The show had open-call auditions at a few different locations. I did not want to stand in line for hours so tracked down a few different emails of casting agents who were scheduling auditions. Though they assuredly had a flood of emails, I figured I would hear back if it was meant to be.
And I did. Later that day, a casting agent contacted me and then the actual casting director emailed later that night. They scheduled us for Saturday afternoon and instructed us to bring props so we compiled every insane picture and newspaper article we could find.
Turns out we didn’t need them. One picture of The Great Pumpkin testifies to our insanity.
I thought I had this argument in the bag with well-rehearsed talking points and humorous anecdotes but my beloved James had some great rebuttals of his own, resulting in a fun and thought-provoking debate.
The woman doing the interview loved our quirky topic. She said we nailed the audition and made it past the first round. So now we wait. Our main challenges for being chosen:
1) Pumpkin season is over so getting video of the soon-to-be destroyed pumpkin is a challenge. They asked us to film some footage of it on our Flip camera and send it to them.
2) Somebody else is growing The Great Pumpkin and has our same issues with an even greater degree of hilarity.
If chosen to appear on the Marriage Ref, we would receive an all-expenses-paid trip to New York to be on the show and a generous prize package (last season was a second honeymoon/week-long cruise). Four different couples appear in each episode and the couple the audience deems the “most right” wins $25,000.
Fingers are crossed that will be me.
I'm a Canadian-born mom of two, former Denver Post columnist, family travel writer, editor of MileHighMamas.com and 9News contributor. Expert on all things Utah, Denver, family and travel. Lover of laughter and life. Happily married to a man obsessed with growing The Great Pumpkin. 