Emma Slater has finally broken her silence on the reasons behind her split from husband and fellow Dancing With the Stars pro Sasha Farber over a year after they first announced their separation.
“It’s really the kid thing,” Slater told Nick Viall on his podcast The Viall Files on August 15. “It’s interesting because I do want to have kids, I just don’t want to delay Sasha’s path in having kids because I know that he is ready for that. I don’t want to talk about him too much because that’s really for him to say, but it’s about kids.”
Despite their breakup, the two dancers are still very close, she revealed, explaining, “We’re still like family, so it isn’t really like the love is not there, it’s actually not that at all. We’re just at potentially two different places. But the hard part was that the love actually didn’t go [away].”
Slater clarified that she did want to have children but was still trying to find out her resistance to taking that step. The DWTS pro said she would not want to rush into such a major decision, which is why she needed time to figure it out. “That’s been the real friction and the real hard part,” she told Viall about recently struggling with the decision to start a family. “It had nothing to do with him. He’s always been very much himself. It’s me that’s found it difficult to understand why I’m feeling different.”
Farber and Slater’s romance unfolded on-screen and Dancing With the Stars fans saw Farber propose to Slater on live TV in 2016, during season 23. They married in 2018. Slater and Farber separated in April 2022, and Slater filed for divorce on Feb. 21, 2023, E! News reported at the time. The date of separation was listed as April 1, 2022, and Slater cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for the divorce.
Farber and Slater showed that their split was amicable as they both competed in season 31 and paid tribute to each other while it was airing. “You guys are the light in the ballroom and I can’t even tell you how proud I am of what you accomplished,” Slater wrote on Instagram after Farber and his celebrity partner Selma Blair decided to withdraw due to her health concerns.
The cast of pros for season 32 of DWTS has yet to be announced, but luckily for fans of Slater and Farber, it seems as though the exes are still on good terms following the divorce filing. On June 30, 2023, Slater posted a series of photos on Instagram of her and Farber getting along great at the Dance the World competition in Orlando, Florida. They also visited their fellow pro Witney Carson and her family.