Julianne Hough tearfully recounts split from ex-husband Brooks Laich: 'An unraveling'

Julianne Hough didn't find her happy ending with Brooks Laich, and she's retelling the sad chapter.

The dancer and TV personality got candid about her split from the former NHL player during Monday’s episode of the “Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard” podcast.

“He’s got the greatest heart that I could ever have the privilege of being with,” Hough told host Dax Shepard.

Hough and Laich wed in July 2017. The “Dancing with the Stars” host said the couple’s newlywed period coincided with the “rough last few years” of Laich’s professional hockey career.

"He was injured and then he got traded before his team that he had been there for almost 12 years won the Stanley Cup," Hough said, later tearing up. “It makes me want to cry because I feel for him so bad."

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And despite the romantic bliss of getting married, Hough described 2017 as “the year that everything kind of started unraveling” in the couple’s relationship.

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Hough and Laich announced their separation in May 2020. While the former couple didn’t disclose the cause of their breakup, they told People magazine in a statement that they “share an abundance of love and respect for one another and will continue to lead with our hearts from that place.”

During her “Armchair Expert” appearance, Hough said she and Laich are “sad that it didn’t work out.”

“I feel like our relationship and our marriage was exactly right, and the end of it is right, too,” Hough said. “We both have regrets that it didn’t work out because I don’t think we had the maturity to come together. He was contracting while I was expanding. We just couldn’t find each other in that.”

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The “Footloose” star said the emotional aftermath of the breakup was “an unraveling,” adding that her dogs died just a few days after her separation from Laich.

“Everything that I had ever known, that I had put into place for my control and my protection,” Hough said. “I had this marriage to this guy who represented more of a father figure to me, and while he was changing, I was changing. Uprooted everything.”

However, Hough said the split ultimately gave her an opportunity to start over.

“I actually get to start in an intentional way that I get to design and create a life that is actually coming from my soul,” Hough said.