'Love rat' Kevin Clifton's rollercoaster love life before Stacey Dooley romance
Strictly Come Dancing's former pro dancer Kevin Clifton has always been one for love, having been married three times before falling for his dance partner Stacey Dooley after their 2018 win. The 41-year-old has broken hearts and suffered devastating break-ups over the years.
He first got hitched to Latin world champion Anna Melnikova when he was just 20 years old in 2003. But their romance didn't last and Kevin said they split up after he 'fell out of love' with dancing. "My wife divorced me because it was her life. I fell into depression because everything I'd put my life into had burst apart," he once said.
Kevin and his first wife Anna Melnikova in 2003
Then he married Clare Fraze after six months together (Patrick McMullan via Getty Image)He soon started dating trained ballet dancer Clare Craze, who he met in a London salsa bar in 2007. They moved in together after just eight weeks, and he popped the question at six months, allegedly without mentioning he'd been married before. They married at St Mary's Church in Clare's hometown of Wivenhoe, Essex, where Kev made a speech he allegedly recycled with his third wife, dancer Karen Hauer.
"Kevin made a speech which I thought at the time was very touching. He loves football and it was a line where he compared me to a top-tier football team, saying he was out of my league," she recalled to the Daily Mail. "Then I read an interview with Karen about his speech at their wedding and it was the exact same line. I had thought it was sweet - until he had used it again."
For a while, things were perfect. They both joined popular dance show, Burn The Floor, and toured the world together. But with Kevin as one of the main dancers, Clare struggled to watch him perform such sensual routines with other women. She tried hypnotherapy to control her jealousy, and believes that's why when Karen joined the show in New York, she thought nothing of their chemistry.
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On their return to London, however, she says it became very clear that Kevin's attentions had been diverted. He went home to Grimsby, saying he needed to recover from bronchitis, then a week later asked Clare to meet him at a bar in Covent Garden. There, she says, he told her he'd been working out "how he was going to move on". "When he told me it was finished it felt like all hope from my life had gone - it was overwhelming," she continued.
For Kevin's part, he dismissed their three-year marriage as an unhappy one. "I was never particularly happy in my previous marriage," he said at the time. "I wasn't myself - a lot of friends and family were telling me that. It was just a bit of a weird time. When I met Karen, I could get on with her on a completely different level." He and co-star Karen quickly became an item and got married in 2015 after he proposed on stage.
Dance partner Karen Hauer was Kevin's third wife (WireImage)
In 2018, Kevin and Stacey Dooley got together (Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)The pair called time on their three-year marriage in March 2018 - the same year Kevin met his current partner, journalist and presenter Stacey Dooley. Karen said she had been 'blindsided' by how quickly Kevin moved on and and was left 'struggling to get out of bed'. "I went through a really tough divorce, and it was the most difficult thing I've faced on my own," she told The Sun.
Kevin announced their split on BBC Radio 2 Breakfast show - just as they prepared to go on a joint tour together. Speaking in 2021, Karen she would 'never, ever have let go' of her marriage to Kevin and wanted them to battle through the hard times. In a candid discussion on the Divorce Club podcast, Karen said: "I would have liked to have fought for it. It took me a year after we separated to actually let go of him."
When Kevin and Stacey were first paired together on Strictly, she was in a seven-year relationship with personal trainer Sam Tucknott, who was regularly seen cheering her on from the audience. Four months later, the pair split and furious Sam went on a rampage, claiming he had found gushing messages between the pair on Stacey's phone as they were clearing out their flat after agreeing to split.
"I was getting my stuff to leave. Stacey was in the loo," he alleged at the time. "Her phone went and it was Kevin Clifton - 'I love you' with a red love heart," he added. Branding Latin expert Kevin a "an absolute rat" and a "slippery, slimy snake", Sam ranted: "He's an absolute complete f**king rat with no b******s or decency to hear me out. The fact he won't have a man-to-man conversation with me says everything about the guy."
Both Kevin and Stacey were adamant there was never any crossover, and she took to X (formerly Twitter) to put her side across. "Anyone with any adult life experience knows there are two sides to every story," Stacey wrote. "I haven't got the time or energy to correct some of the utter nonsense I've read on here. Re Sam, I loved him v much and only wish him happiness and success going forward."
The pair won Strictly in 2018 and fell in love on tour (PA)
They are smitten and share a daughter called Minnie (mirror.co.uk)Confirming they were indeed an item after the Strictly tour, things moved quickly between the new couple as Kevin moved into Stacey's flat, before they bought their first home together in west London. Talking about their romance publicly for the fist time, Stacey admitted she was head-over-heels in a chat with Radio 5's Headliners podcast. "I didn't want to be such a cliché - it's so cringe and cheesy. I want to be cooler than this," she said. "He is an angel. He is the kindest man I've met."
Kevin later revealed that behind closed doors they're far removed from the glitz and glamour of showbiz, preferring a good cup of tea to a bottle of wine as they curl up on the sofa to watch Netflix. He told the Guardian: "We are the most boring couple in the history of the world. I will be sitting here doing my Mamet masterclass and saying: 'What do you think about consciousness?' And Stacey does her work and then likes to sit and watch things like Selling Sunset on Netflix about estate agents in LA."
In January 2023, they welcomed their daughter, Minnie. Stacey later gushed over Kevin in a post for Valentine's Day, describing him and Minnie as the "loves of [her] life". She added: "I dunno what I did to get so lucky." Kevin later admitted on Stacey's podcast, Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over: Family And Me, that he wouldn't allow the tot to follow in his dance footsteps. "I don't want Minnie to dance," he declared, adding that he was "scared" the world of dance would damage her "sense of self-worth". He continued: "It's too competitive a world. I would rather she do something else. Anything else." The pair have mutually agreed to protect her from the limelight.
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The sound of wedding bells seems to be an unlikely prospect, if Stacey's comments from July 2023 are anything to go by. She declared marriage 'isn't important' joking that Kevin had "already done it a couple of times" anyway. "Marriage has just never been massively important to me," she explained. "And obviously, it's very well documented Kev's done it a couple of times before, so you do have to bear that in mind. Coming down the aisle, 'Hello everyone, I know what you're all thinking'." Stacey added that marriage has never been something she's "dreamt about" doing, as she confirmed: "I don't subscribe to the idea that you can offer more stability if you're married, because we know that loads of marriages end in divorce."
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