'Dancing With the Stars' 2016 News: Did Show Affect Emmitt & Pat Smith's Marriage? [VIDEO]
Emmitt Smith may have won ABC's Dancing With the Stars back in the day, but the experience may have caused tension in his marriage.
Smith's wife, Pat Smith, spoke with Dr. Phil McGraw on his talk show recently about her marriage and her new book, Second Chances: Finding Healing for Your Pain, Regaining Your Strength, Celebrating Your New Life. The former beauty pageant star discussed how Dancing With the Stars did not exactly help as she was trying to work out some issues with Emmitt.
"I'm dealing with trust issues, self-worth. You're dancing with this cute little 20-something-year-old," Pat noted, referring to Emmitt's pro dancing partner Cheryl Burke. "As much success as he had on the show, I really was happy for him, but I was getting more and more angry and more and more resentful because I was not fulfilling my own dreams. It caused friction."
Emmitt would later return for Dancing With the Stars: All Stars 12 seasons later. Burke also returned and was paired with him and they almost got a repeat victory, coming in fourth place overall.
Pat clarified in her interview that Burke never did anything disrespectful towards their marriage. She also spoke about why she wrote her new book and how she decided to turn things around after years of unhappiness.
"For years, I lived with this thought of feeling like a failure. I felt so much shame because of decisions that I made in my life, really bad decisions that I made, mistakes that I made, a lot of losses," Pat admitted. "And so, I finally got to a place and realized that things happen in life for a reason - good and bad - and I learned that the things that happened for me that were bad in my eyes, actually were the things that God was using to build me to be the woman that he really wanted me to be."
