Alexa and Carlos PenaVega got candid about the strain DANCING WITH THE STARS put on their marriage.
“I beat my wife on DANCING WITH THE STARS,” Carlos bragged on the couple’s podcast, “LexLos,” last week. “I got further than her, and it came with a lot of baggage, good and bad baggage.”
The PenaVegas were the first married couple to compete on the ABC series. They appeared on Season 21 in 2015, with Alexa paired with Mark Ballas and Carlos with Witney Carson.
Alexa and Mark were eliminated in Week 9, but Carlos and Witney made it all the way to fourth place.
Alexa echoed Carlos, calling her time on the show “as good as it was bad” and suggesting that having Carlos there actually made it worse.
“I would have had so much more fun on the show if it were not for Carlos,” Alexa laughed, admitting, “Carlos was really competitive and very jealous.”
Related: Alexa PenaVega Chronicles Grief and God’s Presence in New Book
“Thank God we did it together, because I would not have been able to handle it,” Carlos added, saying he wouldn’t be able to “imagine” Alexa “spending 10 hours a day, every day, dancing so closely with another man while he stayed behind at home,” Entertainment Weekly reported.
“You couldn’t handle it, and we did do it together,” Alexa said.
Alexa felt that she often would leave her dance partner in the dust to help cater to Carlos.
Alexa praised both Mark and Witney for being great partners, but the drama between the dancers also didn’t help the PenaVegas.
“At the time, Witney and Mark were not getting along at all, so they refused to be in the same room together. And that was really hard because we’re married, and the whole point that we were doing the show was we’re going to go in and we’re going to do this together as much as possible,” Alexa said, per TV Insider. “And the second we go in, boom, Mark and Witney refused to be in a room together.”
Ultimately, though, Alexa’s main goal in competing on the show was to shine a light on marriage.
“So many people see marriage as this ball and chain and they don’t see the beauty in it,” Alexa shared. The couple had married in early 2014. “Love you, Mark, but [Carlos] is my real partner.”
Now, the couple look back on DWTS as a time that ultimately reinforced the partnership they set out to celebrate.
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