Some couples learn each other’s love language. Britt Stewart literally learned her husband’s language. The Dancing with the Stars pro, 37, has been married to CODA actor Daniel Durant, 36, for a year, and as the couple marked their first anniversary this August, Stewart shared the biggest lesson the year taught them — one that has been at the heart of their relationship from the very first rehearsal.
“I can’t believe that it’s been a year. And we got to share that incredible moment with a lot of the Dancing with the Stars pros and that family that got to share that special moment with us,” Stewart said at The Hollywood Reporter‘s Creators A-List Party in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Oct. 21. “I would say the biggest thing that we’ve learned from the past year and from our relationship as a whole is communication.” She added: “I learned his language. We have this beautiful communication between us that holds our relationship together, and we just love on each other.”
(Sidewalks Entertainment / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0))A Partnership That Started in Sign
Stewart and Durant first met on DWTS in 2022, when they were paired as dance partners for season 31. Durant, a deaf actor who was born deaf and starred in the Oscar-winning CODA, communicates in American Sign Language. Stewart’s response was immediate and total: she began learning ASL so the two of them could work together directly, without relying solely on an interpreter. “When I met him and found out he was my partner on Dancing with the Stars, immediately I was like, I must learn ASL because I’m teaching him how to dance. I’m not going to use his interpreter,” she said at the time.
The decision changed everything. Teaching dance to a partner who cannot hear the music is a communication challenge on its own; doing it in his language turned rehearsals into something more personal. The pair finished the season in fifth place — and discovered they did not want the partnership to end. Shortly after the finale, Stewart and Durant confirmed their relationship with a Valentine’s Day Instagram post in 2023. Stewart later told PEOPLE that romantic chemistry had begun building during the eighth week of the show. “I was really able to see him and his experience in Dancing with the Stars, but then just a little of his life too,” she said in December 2023.
(Adam Chitayat / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0))Durant felt the same pull. He “couldn’t imagine not seeing” Stewart when the competition ended, he said, and realized his feelings were romantic: “I think, in that moment, we realized what we had felt for each other. It was more than friends, and naturally we connected and started dating.” The couple got engaged in December 2023 and tied the knot on Aug. 23, 2025, sharing their vows in ASL surrounded by loved ones.
Year One: Beautiful, Busy, Intentional
Reflecting on her first year of marriage at Dancing with the Stars Con in August, Stewart said she “couldn’t believe how fast the year has gone.” “It’s been beautiful. Honestly, not much has changed in our relationship, which I hear is a good thing,” she said. “It’s just been beautiful to be in a relationship with this new intention of marriage and creating a life together.” She described the year as a “whirlwind” — both partners are busy — while adding, “Daniel makes everything so easy.”
(Sidewalks Entertainment / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0))The couple’s method for surviving those schedules is the same lesson Stewart named at the Creators A-List Party: “We are very intentional with our relationship because we do spend a lot of time apart, but it’s maintaining that connection, and really, it’s through communication,” she said. “We just communicate as much as we possibly can, and we just share everything. Even if we’re not in the same place, we just share life.” For a couple whose first conversation required one of them to learn an entirely new language, that may be the most natural marriage advice in Hollywood: meet your partner in the language they dream in, and never stop talking.
The setting of Stewart’s remarks matters, too. She was speaking at a party celebrating creators — people whose careers run on communication — in Los Angeles on Oct. 21, with her first anniversary still fresh. The couple had marked the milestone in August, a year on from an Aug. 23, 2025 wedding at which, surrounded by loved ones, the two shared their vows in ASL. That detail — vows signed, not spoken — tells you everything about what this marriage is built on. The language Stewart began learning in a rehearsal room in 2022 became the language of their wedding day, and, if her Oct. 21 comments are the measure, the operating system of their first year as husband and wife.
There is a reason their story keeps resonating with DWTS fans. Season 31 gave viewers a partnership; the years since have given them a marriage conducted, unusually for Hollywood, in full sentences about effort. Stewart does not credit chemistry alone, or luck. She credits a learned language, a deliberate habit of sharing everything, and a partner who, in her words, “makes everything so easy.” A year in, the fifth-place finish that started it all looks less like the peak of their partnership and more like its first rehearsal.
Stewart’s anniversary comments also explain why the couple’s first year looked, from the outside, so calm. Where other newlywed years are defined by adjustment — new routines, new roles, a relationship renegotiated under a new title — Stewart describes continuity: the same communication habits, the same deliberate sharing of everyday life, simply carried on under “this new intention of marriage.” The whirlwind she mentions is professional, not personal. Work pulled them apart geographically; nothing, by her account, pulled them apart from each other. For a couple that began by closing a communication gap most partners never face, perhaps that steadiness should not surprise anyone.