Maks Chmerkovskiy is holding down the fort at home while his wife Peta Murgatroyd competes on Dancing with the Stars.
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Speaking with PEOPLE following Tuesday night's Halloween show, Murgatroyd, 37, opened up about how supportive her husband has been when it comes to looking after their two sons: Rio John, 4 months, and Shai Aleksander, 6½.
“He's on daddy duty full time right now,” says the pro dancer, who is partnered with The Brady Bunch actor Barry Williams. “He's trick-or-treating with Shai. So it's the first year I haven't actually been there, but he's doing a great job."
She adds of Chmerkovskiy, 43, "He's always supporting. He loves Barry. He's rooting us on always. So he's the best.”
Murgatroyd also opened up about her partnership with Williams, 69, telling PEOPLE that it “wasn’t hard” to build their bond. “Barry is just the best guy to be with for six hours a day, and it was a very natural connection from the beginning,” she says.
Tuesday's show saw Williams and Murgatroyd earn their best scores thus far this season, securing 31 out of 40 for their Viennese waltz to "It's A Man's Man's Man's World" by James Brown.
Next week, the duo will take on the quickstep, and Murgatroyd tells PEOPLE that the pair has a challenging few days in store.
“I'm going to be teaching Barry a lot of new moves this week and we've got the team dance also, so it's going to be a very big week for us,” she says. “But I think we're going to be okay.”
Murgatroyd returned to the dance floor three months after welcoming Rio in June. And just days after his birth, she and her DWTS alum husband had exclusively introduced the little one via PEOPLE and revealed his name.
“We loved Rio, which we came upon at the last minute. It’s a perfect complement to our long surname!" Murgatroyd said at the time. "We also wanted something easy to say with Shai."
The baby's middle name, John, is in honor of the Murgatroyd’s late father, Derek John, who died in December 2022.
Murgatroyd and Chmerkovskiy first met on Broadway in 2009 and started dating in 2012. They went on to welcome Shai in January 2017, and tied the knot that July.
That same year, Chmerkovskiy left DWTS after 12 years on the show and later explained that his growing family had contributed to his decision.
"I'm a dad, I'm a husband," he said during an appearance on The Real, adding that "your chemistry changes when you have a child — things look different, they seem different."
However, the pro dancer did return to the ballroom earlier this season to pay a touching tribute to late head judge Len Goodman, who died in April at age 78.
Chmerkovskiy joined fellow alums Kym Johnson-Herjavec, Tony Dovolani, Karina Smirnoff, Anna Trebunskaya, Edyta Śliwińska, Louis van Amstel and Mark Ballas, along with the show’s current pros, for a beautiful dance tribute to Goodman.
