It Started with One Dance: The Quiet, Unscripted Love Story of Derek Hough and Hayley Erbert
Long before the Mirrorball trophies, the sold-out arenas, and the tear-stained Instagram posts that would one day make millions cry, there was just a rehearsal studio in Los Angeles, fluorescent lights humming overhead, mirrors fogged with breath and effort. It was 2013. Derek Hough—already a four-time DWTS champion at 28, fresh off a Move Live on Tour concept he’d co-created with sister Julianne—was running choreography for the upcoming season. In walked Hayley Erbert, a 19-year-old from Topeka, Kansas, who’d just been cut from So You Think You Can Dance’s Top 10. She had the kind of quiet beauty that doesn’t shout, but lingers: long dark hair in a messy bun, eyes that held both steel and softness, and a dancer’s posture that said she’d already survived more than most people twice her age.
They were paired for a group number. Nothing dramatic. No slow-motion montage, no swelling strings. Just two bodies learning how to move together in space. Derek remembers the first moment he really saw her: she nailed a tricky lift transition on the first try, then immediately asked, “Was my timing off by a half-count?” Most dancers would’ve basked in the small win. Hayley wanted it cleaner. That, Derek would later say, was the exact second the spark caught.
They weren’t supposed to fall in love. Derek was the golden boy of ballroom, the guy tabloids linked to every gorgeous co-star from Shawn Johnson to Nina Dobrev. Hayley was the new troupe girl, paid to smile in the background and make the celebrities look good. But after rehearsals, they’d linger. He’d show her how to sharpen her lines; she’d tease him about his obsession with perfect foot placement. They talked about everything and nothing—Kansas sunsets, the pressure of being Julianne Hough’s brother, the fear that one injury could end it all. Somewhere between late-night In-N-Out runs and playlists swapped on long tour buses, friendship turned into something neither of them had the vocabulary for yet.
The world first noticed in 2015, when Derek brought Hayley on as a featured dancer for Move Live on Tour. Side-by-side eight shows a week, city after city, they danced like they’d been partners for decades. Fans started calling it “chemistry,” but it was deeper than that. It was trust. When Derek threw Hayley into a blind lift thirty feet above the stage, she never flinched. When he spiraled into the burnout that would later become public, she was the one who sat with him in silence at 3 a.m. hotel lobbies, no advice, just presence.
Years blurred—tours, Emmys, Derek’s judging gig, Hayley quietly becoming one of the most sought-after troupe members in DWTS history. They kept their relationship private, not out of secrecy but reverence. This thing they had felt too sacred for comment sections. Then came December 2022: a snowy night in Monterey, California. Derek had planned a fake photoshoot at a cliffside house. Hayley showed up in a simple cream sweater, hair windswept, thinking they were just taking Christmas-card photos. Instead, he got down on one knee beside a fireplace he’d decorated with candles and photos from every chapter of their story—rehearsal Polaroids, tour bus selfies, the hospital bracelet from the night she had emergency ankle surgery and he never left her side. No cameras. No audience. Just the ocean roaring below and two best friends promising forever.
They married on August 26, 2023, beneath ancient redwoods in Northern California. Hayley walked down an aisle lined with wildflowers to an acoustic version of “Thinking Out Loud,” sung by Derek’s childhood friend. She wore a custom Vera Wang gown with a 20-foot veil that caught the wind like wings. Derek cried the moment he saw her—ugly-cried, the kind that ruins makeup and perfect photos. Their vows weren’t poetic speeches; they were inside jokes and quiet truths. “I choose you today,” Hayley said, “and I’m stubborn enough to choose you every single tomorrow.” Derek could barely get his out: “You are my safe place to land and my favorite place to fly.”
Then came the test no one writes fairy tales about. December 6, 2023—opening night of their Symphony of Dance tour in Melbourne, Florida. Hayley collapsed backstage after the finale. Intracranial hematoma. Emergency craniectomy. Days in ICU where Derek slept on a vinyl chair, holding her hand while machines breathed for her. He posted one photo: their intertwined fingers, wedding rings glinting under fluorescent lights, caption simply “Please pray.” The dance community—past partners, competitors, even rival shows—rallied like family. When Hayley woke up, the first thing she asked was whether she’d missed curtain call. Derek laughed through tears: “Baby, you missed a lot more than that.”
Recovery was brutal—months of relearning balance, speech therapy disguised as inside jokes, Derek turning their living room into a mini rehab studio. He’d cue up their old tour music and guide her through tiny steps, counting “five-six-seven-eight” like it was 2013 again. On April 21, 2024, Hayley returned to the stage in Las Vegas. The audience didn’t know she’d been cleared for light movement only days before. When Derek lifted her—slow, careful, reverent—the arena lost it. Not because the trick was flashy, but because everyone knew what it cost to get there.
Today, they live in a house filled with mismatched furniture and framed Playbills, rescue dogs underfoot and a fridge covered in thank-you cards from hospitals. Derek still judges DWTS; Hayley choreographs beside him when her body allows. They tour when they want, stay home when they need. Their Instagram is no longer polished highlight reels—it’s messy hair and morning coffee, Hayley stealing Derek’s hoodies, Derek filming her attempting TikTok dances and laughing when she forgets half the moves.
The world loves a grand gesture: stadium proposals, viral first dances. But Derek and Hayley’s love story is quieter, truer. It lives in the way he still reaches for her hand in crowded rooms, the way she knows exactly how he takes his coffee after a 14-hour rehearsal day. It lives in the scar hidden beneath her hairline and the way he kisses it every night like it’s a badge of honor.
It started with one dance, yes. But it became a lifetime of choosing to stay in hold—through lifts and falls, applause and silence, health and hospitals. Their choreography isn’t perfect. Sometimes they step on each other’s toes. Sometimes the music stops altogether. But they keep dancing anyway, two bodies moving as one, not because the spotlight demands it, but because their hearts won’t let them do anything else.
And that, more than any trophy or tour, is the most beautiful performance of all.
