Survivor 6 cast: where are they now? Starting with the youngest woman ever to win

Survivor: The Amazon filmed November 4 to December 12, 2002 and aired on CBS from February 13 to May 11, 2003 across fifteen episodes. It introduced the first gender-split tribes in the show's history — Jaburu and Tambaqui — and it ended with Jenna Morasca beating Matthew von Ertfelda on a 6–1 jury vote.

The winner still holds one record

Morasca was 21 when she won, born February 15, 1981 in Pittsburgh. She was the youngest winner in Survivor history until Jud "Fabio" Birza took that record in 2010, and she remains the youngest woman ever to win it.

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What followed was not a straight line. She returned for Survivor: All-Stars in 2004 and quit in episode three to go home to her mother, who had been fighting cancer for twelve years and died eight days later. She hosted Survivor Live for five seasons, modeled, wrestled, dated fellow winner Ethan Zohn for a decade and ran The Amazing Race with him in 2011, finishing tenth. They separated in February 2013. She faced drug and DUI allegations in Pennsylvania in January 2018, which she denied in a 2021 interview. As of 2021 she was working as an emergency veterinary nurse supervisor.

Morasca and Heidi Strobel famously traded their clothes for peanut butter and chocolate in a reward challenge, then posed together on the cover of Playboy's August 2003 issue.

The rest of the final six

• Matthew von Ertfelda (runner-up) — the season's quiet menace became Senior Vice President of Food, Beverage, US and Canada Operations at Marriott International.
• Rob Cesternino (3rd) — widely credited with inventing modern Survivor strategy, he launched Rob Has a Podcast in 2010 and built it into the genre's dominant recap network. Married to Nicole Palmeri since 2010, two sons.
• Butch Lockley (4th) — the school counselor became a principal and motivational speaker, and is now a grandfather.
• Heidi Strobel (5th) — the P.E. teacher married Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels on December 31, 2006. They have four children including a daughter adopted from Ethiopia, and in 2020 donated their Missouri mansion to a nonprofit camp.
• Christy Smith (6th) — the first deaf contestant in Survivor history took a master's in deaf education, co-founded the nonprofit Discovering Deaf Worlds, created a PBS children's program, and teaches ASL at the University of Nebraska.

Everyone else, in finish order

Alex Bell (7th) married Kim Powers of Survivor: Africa in August 2006 after the show introduced them, and they adopted a daughter. Deena Bennett (8th), a deputy district attorney in California's sexual assault and child unit, is still practicing. Dave Johnson (9th), the rocket scientist with an MIT mechanical engineering degree and an MBA, moved into executive and advisory work.

Roger Sexton (10th), the Vietnam veteran and construction manager whose tribe mostly couldn't stand him, died in November 2022 at 76 after Lewy body dementia.

Shawna Mitchell (11th) is a certified pediatric nurse practitioner and assistant clinical professor at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Jeanne Hebert (12th) went back to marketing. JoAnna Ward (13th) became a personal trainer, author and Atlanta TV host. Daniel Lue (14th), who contracted malaria during filming, acted in Bosch and Lucifer before opening a personal training business in Beverly Hills. Janet Koth (15th) became a registered nurse. Ryan Aiken (16th), out on day three, kept modeling and acting.

Jeff Probst has ranked The Amazon as his tenth favorite season. Rob Cesternino's third-place run is the reason.

For the record: the merged tribe was called Jacaré, and the season's final vote — 6–1 — remains one of the more lopsided results for a winner who spent most of the endgame being told she couldn't win.

Previously we wrote: Who dies in Brothers Under Fire? Every death, in order — starting at the wedding