Julianne Hough admitted dancing with her then-boyfriend Chuck Wicks on Dancing With the Stars was much trickier than teaching any other dance partner.
While chatting to DWTS pro Rylee Arnold on the Thursday, November 20, episode of The Morning After Show, Hough, 37, explained how difficult the experience was.
Arnold, 20, initially brought up her boyfriend, NFL player Walker Lyons, and wondered what it would be like to compete alongside him on the reality show and teach him some dance moves in the process.
“I’m so curious as to how he would be if I was like, ‘Come on, you got this?” Arnold said.
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In response, Hough briefly shared her own experience of working on DWTS alongside her then-boyfriend in season 8 in 2009.
“It was really hard,” she noted. “I, like, I was such a better coach to my other partners, not a very good coach with my boyfriend at the time.
Hough added, “I couldn’t figure out how to do it.”
Following their DWTS stint in 2009, Hough and Wicks called it quits in November of the same year.
“It’s a good thing for us right now,” Hough told Us Weekly in November 2009 shortly after the breakup. “We are both extremely busy and working on our careers and really focused on that.”
She added of Wicks, “We are such good friends. Of course, we weren’t together. We will always continue being good friends.”
However, more than a decade after the former couple parted ways, Wicks claimed the break up wasn’t as good-natured as it first appeared.
Wicks opened up about his relationship with Hough on his “Talk to Chuck” podcast in December 2020, claiming things eventually got messy between them.
“Everyone thought we met on Dancing With the Stars. We didn’t, we met on tour. We were out touring with Brad Paisley,” Wicks said on the podcast. “We’re both loving life, we’re on a high because both careers are going great. We bought a house together, we did all these things and then out of nowhere, you find out that they’re not the person that you thought they were. And you break up. And then everybody wants to know why.”
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Wicks said the pair made a “pact” not to reveal what went wrong in their romance. Instead, they agreed to publicly say things were “fine” and claim that they went their separate ways amicably.
“It wasn’t fine. S**t hit the fan,” he admitted. “I’m not going to throw anybody under the bus but … it wasn’t my fault.”
During the podcast, the country singer also shared that he was worried about running into her after their split.
“When Julianne and I broke up … I was like, ‘When am I going to see her?’ Because I played the game. In the public eye, I was like, ‘Oh, man, it’s great.’ But actually, I didn’t really like her at the time,” Wicks said. “Now, I just don’t even care … It’s on you. You get past it. I’ve seen her one time. I’ve seen her one time in 10 years [at a softball charity challenge].”
