Strictly’s Shirley Ballas opens up on astonishing moment she competed against first husband with her ex-Cydney Yeates-Entertainment – Metro

Strictly Come Dancing’s Shirley Ballas has shared how she once had to compete against her ex-husband with her then-partner during an international dance competition.

The head judge, 62, was previously married to professional dancer Sammy Stopford, until their divorce in 1984, before going on to wed Corky Ballas in 1985.

Not long after tying the knot to Corky and teaching him how to dance, the couple moved back to the UK in a bid to break into the international scene.

‘We had our eyes set on the Open to the World Championship,’ Shirley explains in a preview clip ahead of Tuesday night’s It Takes Two.

‘There was only one thing in the way, my ex-husband, Sammy Stopford, and his partner Barbara McColl.

‘Corky and I finally won in 1995. It was just something that I will never ever be able to describe to anybody. We hung in there against all the criticism and all the doubters, it was amazing.’

Shirley Ballas tells her life story in tonight’s It Takes Two (Picture: BBC)

Shirley was initially married to Sammy Stopford from 1980 to 1984 (Picture: BBC)

She then fell in love with Corky Ballas, who she taught to dance (Picture: BBC)

Shirley initially married her professional dance partner Sammy in 1980.  ‘Sammy taught me everything about the industry that there was to know and actually how to teach somebody else,’ she recalls.

‘After we’d been together a while we got married and we got the nicknames the non-stop Stopfords.’

But their marriage wasn’t to last. ‘After winning major trophies with Sammy, something was missing in my life, and then, out of the blue, I met this gentleman named Corky Ballas from Houston, Texas, and I fell in love,’ she admits.

Shirley and Corky would compete against her ex-husband Sammy (Picture: BBC)

They eventually beat Shirley’s ex Sammy and his dance partner Barbara McColl (Picture: BBC)

Shirley and Corky had one child together, a son named Mark, before going their separate ways in 2007 after almost 30 years of marriage.

Elsewhere in the film, Shirley relives the moment she got the call in 2016 asking her to be the head judge of Strictly.

‘I remember falling to my knees, clasping my face, dropping my phone,’ she says. ‘And I couldn’t believe they’d give a 57-year-old woman a job on Strictly Come Dancing with no TV experience.’

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‘None of this would have been possible without my mother, she was the one who taught me the work ethic and she was the one who has been there through all of it, and we live together to this day,’ Shirley adds. ‘And to her, I’m extremely grateful.’

Strictly: It Takes Two airs tonight at 6.30pm on BBC Two.

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