‘Dancing With the Stars’: Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Sherri Shepherd’s Secret Bond Revealed

Sherri Shepherd shared a wonderful anecdote about Dancing With the Stars pro dancer Maksim Chmerkovskiy during a recent episode of her talk show Sherri. During one of the most difficult periods of her life, Chmerkovskiy offered to pay for dance classes while she was divorcing her ex-husband Lamar Sally in 2014. Shepherd, 55, appeared on DWTS in 2012, with Chmerkovskiy’s brother Val Chmerkovskiy as her pro dance partner.

During the March 2 episode of Sherri, Shepherd was discussing a video Chmerkovskiy posted on social media with his wife Peta Murgatroyd, and their son, Shai. This inspired Shepherd to share a wonderful story about the dancer. “Maksim is so sweet and I want to give him a shout-out because when I was going through my second divorce – I was at the lowest point in my life,” she recalled, via PEOPLE.

Shepherd was “having a hard time financially” with court costs at the time. “Maksim called me and invited me to his dance studio, Come Dance with Me, to just dance and take classes,” she said. Unfortunately, she had to tell Chmerkovskiy she could not afford it. He told her she is “always family” since she worked with his brother. “And he gave me all my dance classes for free for almost a year and I want to thank Maksim,” Shepherd recalled. She called the dancer “an all-around good guy.”

Shepherd and Sally were married from August 2011 until Shepherd filed for legal separation in May 2014. After they welcomed son Lamar Sally Jr. via a surrogate in August 2014, the two got into a lengthy court battle over child support. The legal troubles ended in 2017 when Shepherd announced that a judge denied Sally’s request to increase child support payments.

More recently, the former view co-host has been busy with her own daytime talk show. After hosting The Wendy Williams Show last season, Shepherd scored her own series, Sherri, which debuted last fall. The show has been a big hit and scored a two-season renewal in January. Sherri will stay on air through 2025.

Back in late February, Chmerkovskiy and Murgatroyd posted a hilarious Instagram video recreating Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show performance, with Shai joining in the fun. The couple announced they are expecting their second child in January following a difficult fertility journey.

Murgatroyd is due in June, she told PEOPLE. She said she was feeling ill during Dancing With the Stars and was reluctant to take a test at first. When she finally took a pregnancy test, it was the “fastest positive” she’d ever seen. “It just came up super quick and I was just shocked. It’s been completely different from my past pregnancy,” she said. “It wasn’t like I jumped for joy and I shouted from the rooftops, ‘Oh my God, I’m pregnant. Yay!’ It was more like a, ‘Okay, well let’s see what happens because I’ve been through this four other times, and it hasn’t worked.’ So I was very skeptical. I didn’t even tell Maks for a while.”