Ahead of the season 28 premiere of Dancing With the Stars, contestant, Lauren Alaina, 24, confirmed that she had ended things with her boyfriend, John Crist, 35, after just a few months. Following the show, she opened up a bit more about the split to HollywoodLife and other media outlets. “John and I are still really good friends,” Lauren explaind. “It just, like, didn’t work out. But it was good timing for me to come to L.A. and dance on TV! So it worked out!” Lauren also confirmed that being on the show has been a “nice” distraction after the split.
Lauren and John went public with their relationship in May, when she revealed that she ‘slid into his DMs’ after watching one of his videos on Instagram. He admittedly saw the ‘verified’ check mark by her Instagram handle and Googled her, which helped spark his response. The new romance came just months after Lauren ended her engagement to Alex Hopkins, who she had been with for SIX years. However, now, it looks like Lauren’s focus is all about the dancing, rather than her love life!
The 24-year-old is partnered with Gleb Savchenko on DWTS, and her first dance (a cha-cha-cha) landed her a score of 19/30 during the premiere. She landed in third place on the leaderboard behind James Van Der Beek, who scored 21, and Hannah Brown, who scored 20. “The dance scared me today!” she admitted. “But we did really well and we got good scores.” Lauren admitted that she was ‘shocked’ to score a 7 from Carrie Ann Inaba. “I thought I passed out for a second and was, like, asleep,” she joked.
Of course, Gleb was super proud of his partner, too. “She’s amazing,” he gushed. “I’m so proud of you. Awesome for week one. We are going to work. We’ve got some work to do, but we’re going to stay. We’re going to stay in this competition!”