‘DWTS’ Host Erin Andrews Reveals How Her Cancer Diagnosis Strengthened Her Marriage

Dancing With The Stars host Erin Andrews said her battle with cervical cancer more than two years ago has only strengthened her marriage to hockey player Jarrett Stoll.

“I get really emotional about it,” Andrews, 40, told Entertainment Tonight last week. “My family has been through so much with everything that I’ve been through in my life, and it’s just like, they need a break.”

The FOX Sports broadcaster continued, “My husband, that was a lot to deal with, and I don’t really like dealing with the things like this in my life. I want to talk about next year’s Super Bowl and Dancing With the Stars and the fall season, and everything like that. It’s a lot but, to be honest with you, it could’ve been a lot worse, and it could’ve gone a different way. So thankfully it didn’t, and thankfully I went and got tested.”

Andrews was diagnosed with cancer in September 2016 and has been cancer free for more than two years. She did not reveal her cancer diagnosis publicly until January 2017. She said her first reaction was “shock, fear, crying” and thinking she would have to miss the Super Bowl and Dancing With The Stars that year.

During her fight with the disease and through two surgeries, Andrews insisted on still working and Stoll, 36, was completely supportive. She said his competitive drive as an athlete kicked in.

“He just went into competitive mode, which I love so much about him,” Andrews told ET. “I think if anything it got us stronger. He went to a lot of doctors’ meeting, saw a lot of diagrams and sat there. And this is a guy who cares about winning face-offs and winning penalty kills and so forth, and he was like, ‘We got this, we got this.’ It made conversations about having babies very real and candid for him and our life and everything. So he was amazing.”

Stoll, a former player for the Los Angles Kings and Edmonton Oilers, married in 2017 and are planning to have children in the future. In the meantime, Andrews is just enjoying how “great” it feels to be cancer free.

“I’ll get choked up about this, [the people around me] they’re so amazing,” Andrews said. “Even the men in my life that I just work with, they’re my coworkers and they’re big, strong, retired football players. I’ll be on the field during pregame and guys will come up to me and be like, ‘How are you feeling, you good?’ [They’ll say] ‘my mom got tested’ or ‘my mom just did this.’”

In the end, Andrews told ET it is important for women to get screened for cervical cancer by their doctor.

“The message we want to get out to women is: They have to go get tested. The stats are insane and they’re shocking, and they don’t need to be this way. But every two hours a female dies of cervical cancer,” Andrews said. “We’ve got to change that.”

Dancing With The Stars returns on ABC this fall.

Photo credit: ABC