Building a blended family is delicate work under any circumstances. Building one in the shadow of a beloved husband’s death — with three children watching how the adults handle his memory — is something else entirely. Allison Holker says her fiancé, Adam Edmunds, gets it exactly right, and the way he talks about her late husband, Stephen “tWitch” Boss, may be the most telling detail of their new life in Utah.
“It’s really beautiful to see him when he talks about my late husband with my children,” Holker told PEOPLE while attending Dancers Against Cancer’s 2026 Industry Dance Awards in Los Angeles on Oct. 21. “It is never a secret. It’s something that we celebrate and we talk about, and we only want to remember his memory in such a loving, light way.”
A Memory Kept in the Light
That openness is a choice, and Holker presents it as the family’s rule. Boss — the dancer and Ellen DeGeneres Show star who died by suicide at 40 in December 2022 — remains a spoken presence in the household, not a closed door. For a widow raising Weslie, 18, Maddox, 9, and Zaia, 5, keeping their father’s memory warm and ordinary is a form of care. Edmunds, by all accounts, treats it the same way.
It helps explain the speed and confidence of the couple’s milestones. Holker and Edmunds made their relationship public in September 2024. In February 2026, he proposed at a surprise birthday party he threw for her 38th — a proposal she revealed a week later, calling it “the most romantic night” of her life. That same month, the family relocated from Los Angeles to Utah, Holker’s home state.
(Michael Adams / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0))Four Kids, One Household
The household they are building has four children in it: Holker’s three, plus Edmunds’ son, Cole. As a mother of three who is now also a future stepmother, Holker describes Utah as the ideal setting for that merger. “It’s so perfect for raising children,” she said of the move. “It has been the biggest change for them, but in a really, really wonderful way.”
“My children get to run around freely in the neighborhood and have friends that they just get to go meet up with,” she continued. And of her fiancé himself, she is effusive: “Adam is such a delight. He’s so good to me and my kids. I can’t even rave about him enough.”
Holker’s own history with Boss is woven through her public identity — the couple met on So You Think You Can Dance, married in 2013, and became one of dance television’s most loved pairs. That she can speak of that chapter with gratitude while planning a wedding is, fans have noted, its own kind of tribute. The healing has not meant erasing; it has meant expanding the family’s capacity to hold both stories at once.
(John Fowler from Placitas, NM, USA / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0))A New Chapter, Written Openly
Every new chapter in this family’s life has been shared on Holker’s terms: the relationship reveal in 2024, the engagement in February 2026, the Utah move that followed. Her family life now runs between dance-world commitments in Los Angeles and quiet days in Utah, where her parents, siblings and high-school friends surround the children.
“We, as a family, have been able to let our guard down and just exist and experience every single day from a little bit of a more lighthearted space,” she said. For readers who followed her through the darkest days of 2022, that sentence lands like a sunrise. Boss’s memory is celebrated out loud, the children are thriving in a neighborhood that lets them roam, and a wedding is on the horizon. It is not a story of moving on. It is a story of carrying love forward — all of it, in the light.
(inkknife_2000 (7.5 million views +) / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0))The Example It Sets
There is a reason Holker’s words about Edmunds and Boss have resonated so widely. Blended families after loss often struggle in silence with exactly the question her household answers out loud: how do you honor the parent who died while fully welcoming the partner who arrived? Her answer — talk about him, celebrate him, keep his memory “in such a loving, light way,” and let the children see their future stepfather do the same — is a model stated in a single quote.
It also reframes Edmunds’ role in the story. He is not presented as a replacement, and Holker never speaks of him that way. He is the man who proposed at a surprise birthday party in February, who moved his life into her home state, whose son Cole has joined Weslie, Maddox and Zaia in one household, and who talks to those children about their father with love. “He’s so good to me and my kids,” she says. “I can’t even rave about him enough.”
As the couple’s wedding approaches, the family’s Utah life — guard down, days lighthearted, memory kept in the open — stands as the real headline. The engagement made the news. The way this family talks about Stephen “tWitch” Boss is what will stay with people: proof that a new chapter does not have to close the old one, and that love, handled honestly, makes room.
Holker has said the family has learned to “let our guard down and just exist” — a modest sentence that, given everything behind it, reads as the summary of four years of grief, courage and rebuilding. In Utah, with Boss remembered out loud and a wedding ahead, existing is enough.