Full of Heart: My Story of Survival, Strength, and Spirit

by J. R. Martinez

  We walked in and I was taken to a holding area where the cast was sitting, waiting to be briefed about the forthcoming live telecast announcement. We were going to have a dress rehearsal before the live shot.

  I introduced myself to Los Angeles Lakers player Ron Artest (who would soon change his name to Metta World Peace) and sat next to him. I thought about how cool it was that I’d watched him play basketball so many times, and now we were sitting together, chatting. I looked over and saw Ricki Lake and flashed to watching her talk show when I was growing up. Then Nancy Grace walked in. I leaned over to Ron and said, “Dude, Nancy Grace just walked in.”

  I figured that since I’d whispered this to him and we were in the middle of a briefing he’d keep his mouth closed. But nope, not Ron.

  He looked up. “Nancy Grace, everyone!” he shouted.

  She smiled.

  Learning the Viennese waltz was hard because Karina put a move in the routine that was like a trick. I was supposed to swing her around on the floor by her hands. Every time we tried to do it, I’d either fall or both of us would tumble down.

  After a couple of weeks, Karina called me one morning on the way to rehearsal. “I think we should take out that element and do something else,” she said. I was getting worried about injuring her, so I agreed.

  At the studio we performed the routine for one of the producers, who persuaded us to leave in the tricky element. “That’s the greatness of this show,” he told us. “You can pull it off.”

  We decided to keep the element and continued to work on it. Pro dancer and cast member Mark Ballas gave me a couple of tips. We danced the routine in front of several of the other cast members, including reality-show player Kristin Cavallari, singer Chynna Phillips, and soccer star Hope Solo. It was the first time any of us had seen anyone else in the group dance.

  I felt so confident that I yelled out “booya!” during the middle of the routine.

  “What the hell was that about?” Karina asked.

  I told her that I felt good and a “booya” was the appropriate way to express that.

  She laughed and said she understood.

  When it came time to work on our second week’s routine, the jive, Karina was like a child who loves to show off to her parents. Every time someone would come into our studio, she would offer to dance our routine for them. I was nervous about this, but when we’d finish, people always seemed excited.

  “You guys are going to win this!”

  Of course we loved to hear this, but we always played it down and stayed focused.

  Every single dance offered a different degree of difficulty. The jive was a fast dance for which I had to learn to kick properly and keep up the pace.

  The night of the premiere we were called out to dance. We stood in our positions, waiting for the start cue. I looked over at Karina and nodded my head, telling her without words that I was ready. Our eyes locked and she smiled at me, and in the next moment the announcer introduced us. Over the weeks, we found our connection was so strong that we didn’t need words to express it. In the middle of the competition our hearts were beating hard with nerves and excitement, but it seemed like they beat at the same time.

  The week-three dance was to be the rumba and represent the celebrities’ most memorable year. For me, that was 2003, the year I was injured. Karina and I decided to dedicate our dance to our military—specifically, to all those men and women who didn’t make it back home from war. Karina emphasized that this needed to be so much more than a dance; it needed to be a musical, a performance.

  This homage added to the already intense pressure and marked the first time that Karina and I butted heads. On the Sunday before show day, we were practicing our routine and making touch-ups. I told her that I wasn’t happy with the routine and that I didn’t look good dancing it. I wanted the dance to be perfect, since it was a tribute.

  Karina reminded me that she was the pro and would decide whether our dance was up to par.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

  Karina turned around and walked out without a word.

  I stood stock-still after she left.

  “Are you okay?” asked a crew member.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Go home and relax,” he said. “Rest a bit and everything will work out.”

  I took his advice. The following day—show day—I found Karina in the studio and apologized. I told her why I’d acted the way I had. She said she understood and assured me that I’d go out there and do a great job.

  Right before our introduction later that day, they aired the package they’d put together about my background and our past week in rehearsal. All day we’d remained unemotional, and we’d both been worried that we wouldn’t be able to achieve the focus that would take our performance from great to out of this world.

  “I know I’m asking a lot,” Karina said, “but I need you to go to that place one more time, and I need you to take me with you.”

  I have no memory of the performance because I was crying so hard.

  When we finished, Karina and I gathered ourselves to soak in the feedback from the audience. They gave us a standing ovation.

  “Tonight you did something extraordinary,” judge Carrie Ann Inaba told us, calling our performance “one of the most profound, honest dances.”

  Judge Bruno Tonioli crowed at us. “You danced from your heart,” he said. “I could feel every emotion. It was a great, great achievement.”

  Our routines got stronger and more personal each week. We always joined hands and said a prayer before performing.

  Week six really tested our partnership. The required dance was the quickstep, which to me was the most difficult because I had to keep my arms raised as I moved my feet with lightning speed. Karina and I usually had our routines down cold by Friday or Saturday morning at the latest, then we’d spend Saturday and Sunday refining our steps. This week was different. By ten o’clock Saturday night, I was still having problems with the routine and we were getting snippy with each other. Even though she was right, I was fed up with her telling me I was wrong. I was just plain tired of doing the routine. I kept stepping on Karina’s toes, and I was having a hard time keeping up the pace. Karina would become frustrated and push me off and stop. I’d go back to the starting position and say, “Let’s do it again,” and off we’d go.

  It was a struggle, but we finally got it down. Who would’ve dreamed that dance would get us two tens and a nine, our highest scores since the competition started.

  Meanwhile, behind the scenes, whenever we had a little downtime—and there was very little downtime—I got to spend time with my castmates. I found myself talking to Rob Kardashian a lot and joking around with him. I’m definitely not a Kardashian fan, but I came to see Rob as a pretty chill dude over the course of the season. We hung out a fair bit, and I pulled a few pranks on him, like busting in on his rehearsals or interviews. He did the same thing to me and Karina. A couple of times I played silly jokes on him, hiding his shoes or his phone. Sometimes he’d come into our studio and turn off the lights before slamming the door. One time his partner, Cheryl Burke, left her dancing shoes in the studio. I put plastic spiders inside them and stuck them on top of the fence at the entrance to the building. The next day she came into our room laughing and told me she was going to kick my butt.

  I spent some time talking with Chaz Bono about his upcoming book and his speaking engagements. The only child of Sonny Bono and Cher, Chaz had recently undergone gender reassignment. He was cool and didn’t seem to care if people might be judging him.

  Ricki wasn’t as welcoming as she might be under different circumstances. I think the pressure got to her, and she was very competitive, which was great for the show but not so good for camaraderie.

  Hope would say, “I’m not used to this world, and you guys are.” The show really took her outside her comfort zone. I was sensitive to that because I was fairly new to entertainment as well, so I s
pent time urging her to just relax. Her partner was Maks Chmerkovskiy, and Karina and he had a history and they didn’t talk or get along at all. Hope and I didn’t want their relationship to define ours, although it was the basis for some awkwardness.

  When it came down to it, I liked everyone in the cast. David Arquette and I had a few good conversations about agents. Nancy and I had Chick-fil-A in common—it’s my favorite fast food and the company originated in Georgia, where Nancy’s from. (Sometimes you have to dig deep to find that unifying element.)

  My relationship with Karina was on a whole different level. I think we’ll be friends for the rest of our lives. And we learned that even if you love your partner, there are days you just don’t want to see each other. The way they eat or talk or take a breath can be annoying. We had that moment right before week nine. The way I walked pissed her off, and her hair pissed me off. Sometimes we’d tell each other that we were sick of each other, and then we’d say, “Okay, that felt great. Want to get a snack?”

  Other days I simply felt like seeing how far I could push my partner. I’d come into rehearsal and just start pressing her buttons. I’d try to turn dance details into a major motion picture, which would completely aggravate her. To keep me in line, she’d make deals with me.

  “You need to help me or I’m not going to help you,” she’d say. “If you give me two hours of really trying, we’ll dork around afterward.”

  During week nine, I was complaining in rehearsal because the Latin heels were killing my feet. I wanted to wear rubber-soled shoes. Karina warned me against it but finally relented.

  “You can wear them just this once.”

  So the one and only time I wore sneakers, I twisted my ankle and we hit the floor hard.

  Karina said, “Okay, maybe we should try that again.”

  But I was still lying there, in pain.

  Ankles aren’t going to kill you, but when you have a sprain it hurts like crazy. Besides, this was the same ankle I’d injured playing football in high school. Karina asked the doc to shoot my ankle with cortisone to take away the pain. “We’ll wrap it as tight as we can to give it support.”

  No way, no injections, I told her. I thought I could work through the pain.

  The Argentine tango we were doing had all the elements for a perfect score. I managed to complete all the lifts, but I couldn’t put all my weight on the ankle. The next thing I know, I was stomping my foot and saying the f-word on camera.

  Karina wanted to slap me. That dance earned us our lowest scores since week two of the competition.

  During the week of our final dance, our freestyle, we were both nursing injuries. Karina had strained her neck and I was still favoring my ankle. By our dress rehearsal, Karina’s confidence had hit an all-time low. All week we’d been screwing up our lifts, and she was freaking out.

  But once we landed the first lift in our final dance, we knew we were on the bullet train to the finish line. It gave us the energy to go all the way through.

  Making it to the finale was fantastic for me. If I won, it would be a major accomplishment. In the last minutes, we were standing there with the other finalists, Rob and Cheryl, waiting to learn the verdict.

  Host Tom Bergeron paused, each passing moment making a loud ticking noise in my brain.

  I looked at Karina and muttered to her, “Will they just tell us already?”

  She bit her lip.

  Then Tom said our names. We literally jumped for joy. I was especially thrilled that I’d been able to help Karina win her first competition after so many years on the show. Tom handed me the disco ball trophy and I held it up high. That thing weighs a ton! The whole cast ran out onto the floor. Dance pro Derek Hough hoisted me up on his shoulders. I struggled to balance, momentarily worried that I’d drop the trophy on someone’s head.

  He released me and I felt someone tugging on my shirt. I looked down into my mom’s proud face. I put my arm around her and pulled her close. To think that eight years earlier I’d been leaning on my mom, trying to learn to walk again. Now I was a ballroom dancing champion. What a journey.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Full of Heart

  Right after the credits finished rolling, Karina and I were herded off the stage into a back room where we appeared via satellite on the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live.

  “Purple heart, schmurple heart,” Jimmy said, “you got a mirror ball!”

  From there we were taken back out to the floor, where we had a minute with every press outlet gathered. And from there, all three finalist couples said goodbye to most of our special guests and were driven to the Burbank airport. With Karina’s mom and my mom, we boarded a jet and flew overnight to New York.

  In the morning we were at the Good Morning America studios, where we danced, and then it was on to The View, where we danced again. I was completely exhausted. My cheeks hurt from smiling so much. My phone blew up from all the emails, texts, and voice mails I was getting from family, friends, and people I’d met over the years.

  After this three-month dancing boot camp, from August through November, the world had become surreal. Everywhere I went, everyone wanted to take a photo of me. I was on a cloud, but it wasn’t cloud nine. Don’t get me wrong, I was overjoyed, but I felt like I just wanted to sit down for six months and let my mind and body catch up and relax.

  What my fellow cast members and viewers didn’t know was that I had been dealing with some developments in my personal life the last weeks of the show.

  Diana and I had been a couple for nearly a year now. Everything was so natural with her and it felt right to spend all our time together. When I wasn’t working, that is.

  Ever since Diana and I had made the transition from friends to more-than-friends, I’d supported her crazy hours at work. I brought her coffee or lunch, put gas in her car if she didn’t have time to do it herself, or just stepped up in whatever way I could. Other than that, all she ever saw me do was take Romeo to the park.

  Once I began rehearsals for Dancing, everything changed. I became really focused on my career. Not only was I crazy busy, but I was obsessing about my professional future. I was determined to make the most of the opportunity.

  On September 8 I had arrived home from rehearsal to the apartment we now shared and jumped into the shower. We were going to meet some friends for the kickoff of the NFL season: the Green Bay Packers versus the New Orleans Saints.

  I was sitting on the floor putting on my shoes when Diana walked into the room and closed the door behind her. She sat down on the bed and listened to me talk about my day and the steps Karina had taught me. Finally I paused to look at her.

  “What’s up?” I asked. She had a strange expression on her face. It made me feel nervous.

  She hesitated a second. “You know how I’ve been feeling a little weird lately?” she began.

  I nodded.

  “I took a pregnancy test.” She didn’t need to finish, but she did: “I’m pregnant.”

  I jumped up to take her in my arms.

  “Are you cool with it?” she asked.

  “This is amazing,” I replied. It was amazing.

  Then the real world crept back in. I sank down on the bed and thought about how a baby wasn’t part of our plan. Things were just kicking off for me, and I hoped they would continue to. I thought about how I wasn’t necessarily ready for this yet, that the timing wasn’t right. I’d always wanted to be a father, but now?

  Diana needed me to tell her that everything was going to be okay, but I didn’t. Because I didn’t know if it would be okay.

  In the coming days, I found myself withdrawing from her, mulling over the prospect of fatherhood. I knew I’d have a crazy schedule after we wrapped the show—how would that dovetail with the birth of a baby? And what about me and Diana? When would we have time to enjoy each other as a couple?

  To be fair, Diana was reflecting on the pregnancy, too. We agreed to keep the news to ourselves for now.

  I tri
ed to keep the thoughts of a baby from distracting me as I practiced with Karina, but she knew something was up, and I finally shared the news with her.

  The demands of the show seemed to seep over into everyone’s relationships at home—that’s just the way it was. It wasn’t Karina herself who bugged Diana, it was all the time I spent with Karina practicing, day in and day out. My relationship with Diana was complicated further by the weight of an unplanned pregnancy.

  Before the premiere of Dancing with the Stars, I had to fulfill a couple of speaking commitments in other cities. Karina came with me so we wouldn’t lose any practice time. I invited Diana to accompany us on one of the trips. The two women hung out together and got along just fine, which went a long way toward alleviating any misgivings Diana may have had.

  When we told Diana’s parents about the pregnancy, they digested the news slowly. Her parents are very traditional—marriage, then baby—so their enthusiasm was tempered by the fact that their daughter and I weren’t married. They also worried that we were rushing our relationship.

  Diana began to feel like she was figuring everything out on her own. She was excited and wanted me to be at the same place she was. There were a lot of nights when I’d come home from rehearsal and we’d hash it out. Eventually I realized I just needed time to process our new reality.

  After about a month, I was ready: Okay, this is happening. We embraced it.

  After Karina and I won Dancing with the Stars, Diana and I took a little vacation to the Cayman Islands, our “babymoon,” as she called it. We were so ready to get away from it all and have a little downtime. I was looking forward to being one of the masses instead of a celebrity. I figured no one would care about us outside the United States. Not so.