STRICTLY Come Dancing star Oti Mabuse has revealed how she became so consumed by working on the celebrity dance contest that she “wasn’t really in” her own marriage, and ended up breaking down in the shower fully clothed. Opening up to relationship coach Paul Carrick Brunson on his podcast We Need To Talk, Oti describes physically and emotionally detaching from her husband, Romanian dancer Marius Lepure, when she joined the hit BBC1 show, a year after they married in 2014. She says: “Strictly is not a TV show. It’s a lifestyle choice. It is all you think about 24/7. It’s all you do. You’re on tour, you’re doing other Strictly-associated shows. You’re not really 100% in the marriage, because this is gold. The trophy is handmade, by the way, and you’re fixated on it. “[During Strictly]. I didn’t communicate with my friends, I didn’t communicate with my family, I didn’t communicate with my husband. It was just this one goal that I wanted to achieve so, so, so, so so much.” The eight times Latin dance champion, who has a degree in civil engineering, adds: “It was a lot about me in those years.” Oti met Marius, 42, in 2012 at a dance trial in Nuremberg, Germany – where he was also running a dance school – after she travelled from her home in Pretoria, South Africa, in search of a new professional dance partner. Speaking to Celebs Go Dating and Married At First Sight love guru Paul, Oti recalls how Marius declared his love for her within a week of meeting, then proposed after two years. The couple worked together on the 2015 series of Let’s Dance, the German take on Strictly Come Dancing, before conducting a long distance relationship after Oti relocated to London to join the UK show. Appearing alongside his wife on the podcast, which goes live tonight [Tuesday] at 6pm, Marius says he understood first-hand what the job required for her to win. Recalling a time he flew into London Stansted from Germany before hiring a car and making a 500-mile round trip to Blackpool for the briefest of reunions with Oti, Marius said: “We were literally together for three or four hours and she was like, ‘I have to sleep, I’m sorry’ and I was ‘Okay, let’s just cuddle for a few hours’ and that was it. “I’m in that business. I knew what it takes to be a successful dancer and choreographer in a show like that, so it was nothing new. But obviously it’s tough and it hurts and it’s not the easiest time but you see the end of the tunnel” Ultimately, Oti’s hard work paid off. In 2019 she finished in first place alongside ex Emmerdale actor Kelvin Fletcher before securing victory again one series later with comedian Bill Bailey – the first-ever pro dancer to lift the coveted Glitterball trophy two years consecutively. Prior to that, Oti says she had been at her “lowest” ebb while partnering “a celeb who I just couldn’t get to love the job as much as I wanted” and who she says she “couldn’t teach” One evening after rehearsals, Marius returned home to find his wife fully clothed, crumpled and breaking her heart on the floor of the shower. “It was the lowest moment,” Oti recalls. “In my head, I felt, ‘I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough in my job’. All of this pressure that I [had] – I’m representing black women. I’m representing African women. I stand for so much – if I can’t get this job done, I’m not good enough. I don’t deserve to be here’. “[Marius] came in, he got in the shower, fully clothed, he picked me up, and he just hugged me and held me. He said, ‘It’s just a job. You have family, you have friends, you have me and you have food’. “In that moment, I realised that no matter how much I have this career – and I love the show and everything it encompasses – at the end of the day, I get to go home to the things that make me more. It is not who I am, it’s what I do.” Both big fans of mentoring, Oti and Marius promptly booked onto a Tony Robbins programme, where participants examine identity, core emotions, intimate relationships and what drives their actions. The American self help legend has worked with everyone from Donald Trump and Bill Clinton to Oprah and the Kardashians. “We needed to rebuild our priorities – or my priorities,” says Oti. “[At the Tony Robbins conference] they asked us what our priorities were, and how you list them and how your partner lists them. My priorities [were] work, career and then love and his were love, work and career, and we had to switch that out. We needed to completely reorder that.” Soon after, Oti’s mindset – and marriage – had transformed. Confirming that love is now “one hundred per cent” her top priority, she says: “It took [until] the next series… for me to fall in love with the job again in a completely different way, to fall in love with my husband again in a completely different way, to be more communicative with my friends and my family. “That was the beginning of the change. And then I crushed it! There was no shower crying anymore. Just multiple trophies!” Oti quit Strictly in 2022 after seven years and went on to become a judge on Dancing On Ice plus host her own dating show Romeo & Due before competing in the latest series of Great Celebrity Bake Off in aid of Stand Up to Cancer. But it’s off screen where her biggest role has truly begun. Last November, two months prematurely, she and Marius welcomed their first child, a baby girl who they have never publicly named. Speaking about her 16-hour birth at London’s University College Hospital before their daughter spent six weeks in the intensive-care neonatal unit, Oti explains: “It was over Christmas and it felt like the whole nation was so happy. I was like, ‘This is the worst point of my life, ever.” I felt, ‘I’m not good enough. I’m not good enough in my job’Oti Mabuse Their baby was finally allowed home on Christmas Eve and since falling into the groove of motherhood, Oti has realised she now regrets waiting so long to have a baby. To Brunson’s question of what she would have done differently if she could rewind time and relive her career, she replies: “I would have had my daughter earlier. I’m not old. I’m 34, but I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I wish I had more time. I wish I had done this earlier. “We’ve both always wanted children. We come from big families but because of the dancing, my body is how I pay for the bills so we needed to have the career to be done and over with it to allow ourselves to be like, ‘this is the right time for me’. I didn’t want anything else but to have a family.” According to Oti, she and Marius are “still figuring out” how to balance work, parenting and life, which she admits is the biggest challenge to their marriage, especially with the absence of support from foreign-based family, including Oti’s Strictly judge sister Motsi, who lives lives near Frankfurt, Germany with her husband and young daughter. “We are doing it, just us. We don’t have extra help. We don’t have any family here. It’s just us. So time is the challenge of us-time, his own time, work time, family time, baby time and that can create, sometimes, conflicts.” Yet alongside the grit, determination and resilience that runs through Oti’s veins, her marriage to Marius is evidently one of the strongest and as parents, she speaks warmly of the fact they take on an equal share of responsibilities, which allows them to bring the best of themselves to the table professionally and personally. “If I’m working, if I’m promoting our tour [Viva Carnival] and I have a week of back-to-back work, he can take the baby and travel the world, and I’ll still be okay with that,” says Oti. “We were both in this together and it’s great.” Fabulous will pay for your exclusive stories. Just email: [email protected] and pop EXCLUSIVE in the subject line.
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