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Derek Hough on How He Prioritizes Wife Hayley & Their Baby Amid ‘DWTS’ & More
What To Know
- Derek Hough became a first-time dad when wife Hayley Erbert gave birth to their daughter in December 2025.
- In an interview with Swooon, he opened up about how he makes time for his family amid his busy Dancing With the Stars and work schedule.
- Hough also revealed that the best part of fatherhood is seeing his Erbert become a mother.
Derek Hough is in a very busy season of his life. Not only is he currently working as a judge on Dancing With the Stars and host of Extra, but he’s also gearing up for his Dance for the Holidays tour, which runs throughout November and December of this year.
On top of that, he and wife Hayley Erbert are new parents to daughter Everley, whom they welcomed in December 2025. Hough, who has partnered with Huggies for their #huggiesfirst campaign, is dedicated to prioritizing time with his family amid his hectic work schedule.
“Listen, I’m going to be honest with you, there’s days, for sure, when I leave in the morning, and I see them asleep in the bed together and Everley’s just, like, an angel and I just do not want to leave,” Hough told Swooon. “But thank goodness for FaceTime, you know what I mean?”
Hough also said he likes to “leave little Post-It notes around the house” and that his family goes on walks in the evening to spend time together. “Being on tour together, actually, we get to spend a lot of time together, 24/7, which is awesome,” Hough noted. (The family was on the road together for his Symphony of Dance: Encore tour over the summer.) “We find the time. We find the time, and it’s a good amount. It’s good.”
Of course, “sometimes it’s harder than others,” Hough admitted, citing the busy two-night premiere of Dancing With the Stars this week as an example. But when it’s all said and done, he and Erbert try to “enjoy [the] evening, go on a walk, have a nice bath time [with their daughter], and just savor the moments.”
Hough gushed that fatherhood is “the best,” but he’s been most excited about seeing his wife, whom he married in 2023, become a mom for the first time. “I have four sisters, so I’ve grown up around mothers, and I have nieces and nephews, but it’s something different when you have your own child and seeing your wife being a mom,” he shared. “It’s just so impressive. I’m just always so impressed every day.”
He said he’s “so lucky” to have Erbert as a partner and wife, adding, “She’s just so on it. I just take her lead, and I’m learning so much from her.”
The DWTS judge also got emotional as he reflected on bringing his daughter to the ballroom for the first time this season. “I was there at 22 years old, as a young kid, not knowing what the hell I’m doing,” he pointed out. “And now I’m in that room, and I’ve experienced so much life in that room and so many achievements and heartbreaks and all these things you could talk about in that room. And now I’ve had a lot of success in that room, too. But my greatest achievement is I was holding this girl in this room.”
He continued, “It makes me emotional thinking about it because it’s such a nostalgic space. Every time I go in that room, I have such a wave of nostalgia, and I have all these flashes of when I was a young kid, and I was running around here, and we’re doing this and doing that. And then I have these moments where I’m like … whoa, I have a daughter. Whoa. It’s pretty cool. It’s pretty crazy.”
Dancing With the Stars, Season 35, Tuesdays, 9/7,c ABC and Disney+
