ET celebrated Maks and Peta's romance for Couples Week, and the lovebirds took us back to the very beginning of their love story.
Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Peta Murgatroyd set the #relationshipgoals bar quite high when they wed in 2017, and the couple has remained steadily in love ever since.
ET celebrated their romance for ET's Couples Week, and the lovebirds took us back to the very beginning of their love story.
"I have the correct version," Maks told ET's Nischelle Turner of the day he met Peta. "It was on Broadway and I literally walked in, stage right, and said 'hello' to the crew and she was the furthest away."
The couple met as dancers on the 2009 Broadway production Burn the Floor, a live dance show inspired by a performance at Elton John's 50th birthday party.
Maks told ET he felt a spark with Peta right away. "I always knew it was going to be her," he said.
The attraction proved to be a slower burn for Peta. "He came in big chested, 'Here I am, I'm Maks from Dancing With The Stars,'" she remembered. She had yet to join the DWTS cast herself.
"I was like, 'I don't know who you are, I'm from Australia so I couldn't really give two hoots,' and I was just sitting back very much observing him," she said.
Though their love took time to grow, Peta admits their friendship became important even before it turned romantic. "It wasn't love at first sight or anything," she said. "We were strictly platonic friends and our friendship grew to the point where he actually offered me my first visa to stay in the country, as a friend."
Maks laughed at the memory, recalling the fact that he didn't actually know how to help her. "I didn't know what I was saying," he said, but he called colleagues at DWTS in an effort to figure it out and keep her from leaving.
Though Maks and Peta never danced as a couple on Burn The Floor, they did join together for a few gigs early in their friendship. Both of them agree the dance floor helped their love take shape.
"I remember doing an event with him with Alexa Chung, on one of her TV shows," Peta recalled. "I remember dancing with him and there being a little spark and I was like, 'Oh, okay.'"
Later, the couple took the stage during a DWTS performance that Peta's mom was there to see. "My mom was in the audience and she was like, 'There's something going on between you two,'" Peta recalled.
"Susan liked me right away," Maks said.
Since then, Maks and Peta gained notoriety as a fan-favorite DWTS couple, partnering up for numerous duets during their time shared on the show. Both agree: They are each other's favorite dance partners.
Offstage, Maks and Peta are proud parents to six-year-old Shai, who they welcomed the same year as their Oheka Castle wedding in Long Island, New York.
Peta has since been open about her fertility struggles in the journey to a second child and took fans behind the scenes of her several miscarriages and IVF treatment throughout 2022. In January, the couple announced they were pregnant again.
Maks and Peta both told ET they kept this pregnancy under wraps for a long time. "Because of the way it came about, some difficulties with getting pregnant, we just sort of went with nothing's happening, keep it normal, keep it chill," Maks said.
They've been laying low at home with Shai, grateful for their nest ahead of expanding their family. "We actually told [Shai] in our bathroom," Peta said with a laugh. "He was looking at my stomach, he's like, 'Mommy, you've got a baby in there,' and I was like, 'We do actually.' And he was so excited, just jumping around."
Peta added that she hopes to get back to DWTS next season, shortly after giving birth. Maks hasn't returned to the show since 2017, but added that fans can never count him out entirely.
"It's proven itself to be a thing and now it's kind of part of life," he said of DWTS. "How do you not appreciate a project that stays on, that gives you not just the job and the paycheck but also this kind of outlet?"
Who knows, perhaps the couple will take their love story back to the dance floor in 2023. Fans will have to keep watching to find out.
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