Fifteen years after sweeping to victory on “Dancing With the Stars,” Brooke Burke is disclosing some eyebrow-raising details about the experience.
Appearing on Monday’s episode of Cheryl Burke’s “Sex, Lies, and Spray Tans” podcast, Brooke Burke revealed that she had a crush on her dance partner, Derek Hough, while competing on “Dancing with the Stars” in 2008.
She went on to note that she would’ve considered an off-screen romance with Hough if she hadn’t been married to “Baywatch” actor David Charvet during her “DWTS” run.
“I would have had an affair with him,” Brooke Burke said. “But listen, let me tell you why: You are intertwined with someone’s body when you’re not a dancer. There is no way that I have ever been so connected — besides with a lover or a husband — than I was with Derek. And it’s every single day.”
Listen to Brooke Burke’s remarks via New York Post’s Page Six below.
Though she and Hough kept their relationship professional, the television personality believes her feelings were natural given the chemistry they’d worked to develop both in the rehearsal space and in front of the cameras.
“So for three months, you are in someone’s arms,” she said. “Why do you think people fall in love? You smell them, you feel them, you’re breathing with them. It can be more intimate than making love in a bedroom — you’re making love on a dance floor if you’re really connected.”
She also described Hough ― who married fellow dancer and TV personality Hayley Erbert in August ― as a disciple of “tough love,” at least when it came to the dance floor.
“He was really hard on me,” she said. “He did not love me through routines and support me and tell me that it was amazing. He was brutally honest.”
Brooke Burke and Charvet divorced in 2020 after about nine years of marriage. The pair share a 16-year-old daughter, Heaven, and a 15-year-old son, Shaya.
Interestingly, Brooke Burke said her “DWTS” tenure was actually “great” for her relationship with her former husband.
“David was really supportive,” she explained, “and he is also a bit of a performer so he understood the pressure.”