Where Is ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Season 1 Winning Pro Alec Mazo Now?
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When Dancing With the Stars first premiered in 2005, there was no knowing just how massive the show would eventually become. The first season only included six contestants who were paired with six professional dancers, none of whom are still on the show today.
Alec Mazo and his celebrity partner Kelly Monaco became the first-ever champions of Dancing With the Stars that summer. He then returned for Seasons 4, 5, 7, and 9, but never finished higher than eighth place. As the show heads into its 34th season this fall, scroll down for an update on what Mazo is up to now.
What happened to Alec Mazo?
Mazo has moved on from his career as a dancer and now works in finance as a general partner at DGA Capital, per his LinkedIn. After his last season of Dancing With the Stars in 2009, he attended Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business from 2011 to 2012 and received his master of science in management.
He then worked at DGLogik as the chief financial officer from 2012 until 2016 when he took his position at DGA Capital.
Why did Alec Mazo leave Dancing With the Stars?
Mazo opened up about his and his wife’s (more on her below) decision to leave the show in a 2013 interview with Jake’s Take.
“We had 15 seasons between us and it was a great experience, but it became very repetitive,” he explained. “We had done four tours of Dancing with the Stars and developed a pretty decent network of connections and we just figured out that by the end of the day, it did not matter if we did 15 or 20 seasons, we had to move on from Dancing one way or another. We had an opportunity to produce and that’s when we decided when it was time to leave.”
After their exits, they stayed connected to the dance world by running their company Dancing Pros Inc. until 2012. “We started to work with other people and they started asking us to produce events and shows. We had to create a company that would bring all of that together plus in a capacity to produce a more integrated venture,” Mazo’s wife explained.
Is Alec Mazo married?
Yes, Mazo is married to fellow dancer and Dancing With the Stars alum Edyta Śliwińska. She was on Seasons 1 to 10 of the show, as well as Season 22, but she never won the Mirrorball.
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Mazo and Śliwińska met in the early 2000s while attending a dance competition in England. They went on to become dance partners and eventually got married in 2007.
In November 2024, Śliwińska revealed that she had been diagnosed with cancer three months earlier. She revealed that she’d had “major surgery” as part of her treatment. On the one-year anniversary of her diagnosis, she wrote on Instagram, “Today, I feel healthier than I have ever felt in my life. I made changes to my lifestyle, diet, environment, and exercise routine. I will share what I’ve learned in the hope that each and every one of you can achieve a healthier self, so no one ever delivers the news to you that I received on that hospital bed.”
Does Alec Mazo have kids?
Yes, Mazo and Śliwińska have two children. Their son, Michael, was born in 2014, followed by a daughter, Leia, in 2017.
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“To me, children give meaning to life,” Śliwińska wrote on Instagram in May. “We cheat death by leaving a part of ourselves on earth. Life wins. Notice the ‘to me’ part. Finding meaning in life is a very personal and individual quest, and by no means do I imply that the lives of people who don’t have kids are meaningless.”
Dancing With the Stars, Season 34 Premiere, Tuesday, September 16, 8/7c, ABC
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