By Gavin Boyle
While DANCING WITH THE STARS’s Derek Hough enjoys an impressive career, nothing beats fatherhood.
“Being a dad is the – you know, being in the industry, you wanna do great in your career and be at the top of the game and do this, achieve this, but being a dad now, that’s pinnace,” Hough told PEOPLE. “That’s the top. Everything else is just a bonus, you know what I mean? That is the echelon right there.”
Hough and his wife Hayley Erbert welcomed their daughter Everley Carpi about six months ago on Dec. 29, 2025, and since she joined their family, they cannot get enough of her.
Related: Derek Hough Can’t Get Enough of Being a Dad
“I always felt like I knew I wanted to be a dad,” Hough told Parents. “It hasn’t been surprising, but it’s been rewarding to see my beautiful wife, just to see what a wonderful mother she is, and how she takes to it, and I just love seeing it.”
“Motherhood is even more complex and contradicting than I could have ever imagined. It feels like living in two places at once,” Erbert added in an Instagram post. “Where joy and heartache can both be true, all of the time. My heart is constantly bursting open, while also breaking into a million pieces.”
While welcoming new life is always a miracle, it has been even more joyous for Hough after he nearly lost his wife in 2023 after she suffered a serious brain bleed that left her nearly dead.
“During that time, I was realizing how important she is not just in my love, my life, but just in everyday things,” the dancer said about the weeks after his wife’s brain bleed. “I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t even know how to do that,’ or ‘I don’t know how to ask,’ Hayley does, that’s how reliant you are on her…It was a moment to step up for sure. In many, many ways. I thought she was strong. And I had no idea. I actually had no idea how strong she was really until just a couple months ago.”
Now that Hough and Erbert are beyond that near-miss and are thriving as parents, they look forward to their daughter’s future and hope she follows them into the world of dance.
“Dance is so good for anybody, even if they don’t want to become a dancer — for discipline, for community, for awareness of your body, for control. I recommend it to every single human being on this planet,” Hough said.
Praise the Lord for the bundle of joy that Everley Capri is for her parents.
Read Next: Derek Hough Loves Fatherhood at 40: ‘It’s All Brand New’
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