Actually, they're a pretty normal couple! And they weren't all that far from Palmer Station, a US scientific base that has a physician. They vowed not to use the base outside of a life threatening emergency and went so far as to bury supplies in the surrounding ice in case of fire. (Antarctica is the driest place on earth and fires are actually the main threat. It's generally around 20-30F degrees where they wintered, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, although the wind can be a b*tch!)

Some real nuts have wintered over on the ice much further south; some of the survivors have written books with the few fingers they had left.