Emma Slater made it official with Troy Bersten on Instagram today, and the ccccommunity didn’t miss it.
The Dancing with the Stars veteran kept the caption short – real short. She posted “My Troy Bersten 💘🔐” on Instagram with the hashtags #dwts, #viral, and #baseballroom. The emojis did the talking.
And they absolutely talked.
That heart-and-lock combination is its own language online. The 💘 signals affection. The 🔐 signals something more specific – commitment, the idea that this person is mine. Pair those with someone’s name and you’re not leaving much room for interpretation. Slater wasn’t being vague.
That’s a bold move. Kind of cool, too.
Slater has been a DWTS fixture for over a decade. She joined the American version of the show in 2012, coming over from Tamworth, England. She’s competed across multiple seasons and mentored celebrity partners through some genuinely tough choreography. She’s also become a personality fans follow off camera – her social media presence has its own pull, separate from the show.
Slater was previously married to fellow DWTS pro Sasha Farber. They got married in 2018. The wedding got real coverage in the dance community. They filed for divorce in 2023. Slater kept her personal life quiet after that. Today’s post is the first real public signal. She’s stepped back into that space.
Troy Bersten is also part of the ballroom world. The #baseballroom hashtag in Slater’s post has picked up some attention. It appears to blend ballroom and baseball communities. Its exact meaning in this context isn’t documented anywhere obvious. Those two scenes don’t usually overlap. Maybe they met through that world. Or it’s just a shared community shoutout. Either way, it adds something specific to the announcement.
Response in the comments has been warm. Hearts. Congratulations. Real excitement from people genuinely happy for her – not just a scroll-by double-tap.
Bersten hasn’t made any public statement as of today. In a two-person story, the first person to go public usually sets the tone. Slater set it.
She’s spent over a decade performing in front of millions. Building a real audience. Going through a public marriage and a public divorce, staying private through all of it – that takes real discipline. The DWTS world is small and news travels fast. Keeping a new relationship quiet in that environment is not easy. Breaking that quiet with three words and two emojis is an intentional choice. The simplicity is the point. Keep something private long enough, and a short sentence carries more weight than a paragraph ever could.
Nearly two years of quiet followed the 2023 divorce filing. The three-word caption breaks that silence. It signals that Slater is ready to let this part of her life be seen again. Bersten has yet to comment publicly. That means Slater has shaped the story from the start, on her own timeline and in her own words.
