For those of you familiar with Live with Regis and Kelly, you know and probably love the executive producer, Michael Gelman. I was lucky enough to have a chance to interview Michael over the phone Tues. 7/8, the day before the High Heel-a-Thon, to get a little background on the event and of course try and uncover the really important facts, like what shoes Kelly would be wearing!

Are you guys nervous at all, this being the first high heel-athon?

Michael Gelman: “Oh we’re very nervous, but we’re excited!”

Can you tell me a little bit about how the event got started?

MG: “Months and months ago we were reading news items…Something came out of the wires while we were looking for items for our opening segment and [we] came across a high heeled race… There’s a story on one in Europe and it sounded like a great idea and a lot of fun, and we were like “why don’t we do this here”?

We presented it to Bryant gumble and Kelly who were co-hosting that day, and they were kidding around about it on the air and saying “that would be fun!”, and Kelly was saying “I could win that!” and so I said hey, you know, we really should do that…and so we did! And now it’s finally gonna come to fruition tomorrow!”

I’ve come across the YouTube videos of the Stiletto Races…I think there was one in Germany, and a couple in some other European countries, and they definitely look like fun!

MG: “It’s gonna be a lot of fun… we said let’s do it bigger and better, so we made it into a big charity event. March of Dimes is getting at least 50 thousand dollars, probably a bunch more, and then we’ve got the 25 thousand prize money which is more than in a lot of serious races!”

I was reading on [March of Dimes'] website that you and your wife delivered your daughter prematurely, did this have something to do with you choosing them [as the charity]?

MG: “When we were talking about what charity to align ourselves with, that was close to my heart because we had a premature daughter but she was really fine and as stories of prematurity goes ours was very minor. But…we’ve worked with them and they’re great to work with and we were thinking what would be a good charity that would really be in sync with our audience which are a lot of women at home having kids, and so March of Dimes…plus of course there’s ‘March of Dimes’, and ‘high heeled run’, it all kind of fit very well.”

Do you think this will become a yearly [event]?

MG: “Definitely…the plan is for us to do it again…it’s been a big success so far just with all the attention we’ve been getting and people are very excited and we’ve had a great response. So as long as everything goes well we plan on doing it again and again.”

Do you have any idea of what heels Kelly will be wearing? I understand she has quite a collection!

MG: “She does have quite a collection, and truthfully I got a phone call just a half hour ago still saying ‘hey what do you think about this?’ I don’t think it will be decided until the very last minute.”

What do you think it’s gonna take to get Regis to run in the men’s division?

MG: “Well, I’ve [seen] Regis do a lot of crazy things, but I don’t see him running in this one. First of all we need him to actually host it and she’s already gonna be running in it, so both of them would be tough. Plus, I don’t think running in high heels is his thing.

We are trying to convince Art Moore and also we have Cameron Matheson who’s gonna be kind of our “reporter in the field” there and I’m trying to convince him to run!”

Good luck with that! After looking at the numbers, I was surprised there weren’t more men running in [the race], considering it’s in New York City!

MG: “No I was surprised too, but I mean really we planned this to be a women’s event…I think there’ll always be some guys who [do] it more as a goof…but we made the prize money so big for the women, and not as big for the men, I mean…I think that slowed down the motivation.”

It put the emphasis on what was important.

MG: “Right!”

You can read about the High Heel-a-Thon here, as well as see plenty of pictures from the event!