Cheryl Burke tells celebrities to ‘be single’ if they appear on ‘DWTS’

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Former Dancing with the Stars pro Cheryl Burke thinks that only single celebrity contestants should sign up for the reality TV hit.

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During a recent conversation on her Sex, Lies and Spray Tans podcast, the series alum revealed that she had three “showmances” during her time on the show, telling listeners it was inevitable after pairs end up spending an “insane” amount of time with one another.

“You’re not like, ‘Oh yeah, he’s cute. Like, no, no, I either like you or I don’t because you’re constantly (together) eight hours a day, seven days a week,” Burke, 40, said in a chat with PEOPLE’s senior editor Dave Quinn. “That’s insane. For three months?”

Burke said the performances are so “intimate” that the pros and their partners connect in a way that don’t with their real-life spouse.

“You get close in so many ways,” she continued. “These celebrities are so vulnerable because in order to succeed you have to strip it all down. And that alone? I bet you most of these married celebrities have never even done that with their wives.”

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Burke cautioned: “Be single if you do Dancing with Stars. That’s all, I’m saying.” 

The dancer later confessed that she had a developed feelings for several of her partners over her 26 seasons on the show. But she said her emotions were just “lust.”

“It’s not love, right?” Burke said. “It is in that moment. Then you’re like, ‘Wait a second, how is this person, like in the real world?’”

Burke isn’t the first person to talk about how contestants can develop feelings for one another.

During an appearance on Sex, Lies and Spray Tans in 2023, Brooke Burke said that when she competed on the show back in 2008, she almost had an affair with her pro partner, Derek Hough.

“I would have had an affair with him,” admitted Brooke, who was married at the time. “But listen, let me tell you why: You are intertwined with someone’s body when you’re not a dancer. There is no way that I have ever been so connected — besides with a lover or a husband — than I was with Derek. And it’s every single day.”

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Burke said she developed feelings for Hough because “for three months, you are in someone’s arms.”

“Why do you think people fall in love? You smell them, you feel them, you’re breathing with them. It can be more intimate than making love in a bedroom — you’re making love on a dance floor, you feel more connected. If you have energy, you’re doing this dance and you’re in the rhythm, and then there’s trust, then you’re sharing fear, you’re doing something you’ve never done. How many times do you go through an experience with someone where they’re all you’ve got?” she said (per Entertainment Weekly).

But some of the partnerships have had a happy ending. Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec married ballroom dancer Kym Johnson after sparks flew between the pair met when they teamed up together back in 2015.

“I’ve got so much to thank Dancing with the Stars for,” the mother-of-two told PEOPLE earlier this year. “I ended up meeting my husband on the show. So, thank you!”

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