Derek Hough may take the lead when twirling Hayley Erbert around the dance floor, but they’re navigating life side-by-side, one step at a time.

And not just as a professional team, the couple touring several times following Hayley’s hearteningly speedy recovery from emergency skull surgery to treat a cranial hematoma she suffered in December 2023.

The in-sickness-and-in-health portion of their vows was put to the test only four months after they tied the knot. And there wasn’t a dry eye in the house (including hers and Derek’s) when the pro returned to Dancing With the Stars in October 2024, partnering with her husband on a routine set to Benson Boone‘s “Beautiful Things.”

“We’ve had a full marriage already, just in a year and a half,” Derek quipped to E! News in March 2025 of finding their ideal balance. “There’s so much to be grateful for.”

But while they were pros at the pas de deux, they’re now embarking on a dance party of three.

“Every step of our lives has led us to you,” they wrote of Dec. 29 arrival Everley Capri Hough in a Jan. 5 Instagram post. “Our hearts have been cracked wide open and our world is forever changed.”

Derek, who at 40 is aiming for dual daddy-zaddy status, captioned a reel from the Oct. 6 Tron: Ares premiere, “Date Night with my Babies,” the plural a running theme in his posts since “#babyhough” entered the conversation in July.

No doubt his nimbleness came in handy as he prepared for the most important choreography of his life.

“The best piece of advice that Derek got was, if he’s able to and he’s willing to, ‘Catch the baby,’” Hayley, 31, explained in a December interview with E! News. “‘To be the first hands to catch your baby earth-side is the most special thing ever.’ And he would be the hands that bring the baby to me.”

And while life hasn’t always been an effortless lift for the pair, at this point neither could imagine dancing through life with anybody else.

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Hayley met her future husband when he and sister Julianne Hough hired the Kansas native to dance on their “Move Live on Tour 2014,” and she joined the DWTS pro troupe the following year.

But though they started dating in 2015, it took a few beats for Derek to choreograph a proposal, the six-time DWTS champion admitting on a November 2023 episode of the podcast Couple Things With Shawn Johnson and Andrew East that he had “a negative association with marriage” as a child of divorced parents.

“For me it was just like, what’s the point?” Derek said. “Like, I’m good, maybe it’s not something for me.”

But over time, he noted, “we started surrounding ourselves with couples, with people who were married and had great relationships.”

Still, even he and Hayley ended up having “10 different versions of our relationship,” Derek shared. “In our vows we talked about it, we walked through fire together…We’ve been through some insane obstacles, insane moments that would usually crush and destroy couples.”

He continued, “There would be times when our relationship was over and it was dead—and I mean that in a beautiful way.”

As in, he explained, “This relationship is over but let’s start this new one…Now let’s begin this new version of who we are together.”

And each relationship they’ve had, Hayley said, “is better than the last.”

Their husband-and-wife era commenced Aug. 26, 2023, in an outdoor ceremony at the Santa Lucia Preserve in Carmel, Calif.

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Hayley, who wore custom Marchesa down the aisle, recalled that, while the scenery was gorgeous, “I don’t remember seeing any of it. I was, like, straight tunnel vision to Derek the entire time that I didn’t hear anybody.”

But all credit went to Hayley for planning their big day. “As far just the execution, organization—like logistics, laying it all out—she literally did that entire thing,” Derek said. “It was masterful.” And yes, the dancing at the reception was 10 out of 10.

Hayley noted, “You feel the pressure, because you’re like, ‘This is literally a once in a lifetime thing, it has to be perfect.’ But then I was like, actually, it just has to be perfect for us.”

Then it was onto their two-week Italian honeymoon, after which they headed out on tour.

And when the newlyweds were talking about growing and changing together on Couple Things—”I try to keep my thoughts one day at a time,” Derek said, “because if I think about everything that’s happening, I’ll get overwhelmed“—they had no idea that they’d be called upon to make it through the fire yet again a month later.

They had just wrapped their Dec. 6, 2023, show in Washington, D.C., when Hayley fell ill and was rushed into surgery to remove pressure on her brain after a blood vessel burst.

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“That’s part of the symbolism of us getting married and having dinner in the garden,” Derek said on the podcast. “It was the idea of growth, the idea of things in nature are not clean. It’s tangled, it’s crazy, it’s messy, it’s this and that, but it’s so beautiful.”

And now he couldn’t feel more blessed to be planting roots with Hayley.

As he told E!, visions of becoming a dad dancing in his head, “Our love has just deepened, and it’s gotten stronger and better.”

Everything they had been through, he said, “just makes you reflect and take stock of how important life is.”

See all the incarnations of Derek and Hayley’s love story in photos:

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