pro Gorka Márquez has praised the "best show on earth" for helping him build a family. The dad-of-two shares his two children four-year-old daughter Mia and 11-month-old son Thiago, with former Hollyoaks beauty Gemma Atkinson, who he has been engaged to since 2021. The couple met on the set of in 2017 when she was partnered with his co-star pal Aljaž Škorjanec.
But Gorka explained they only got close with one another after the show. He exclusively said: " has changed my life, if you look back and go back nine years ago, I came here to the UK for the first time to do Strictly, after never been here before, and now look at me now! I have a family, a partner, two children all because of Strictly. "The romance between us didn't start until we did the tour, as on the show we only used to hang out first as a group and in rehearsals.
"But then we were on tour after the Strictly, we had more time and would say 'let's go for a coffee' or 'I'm going to the gym, can I come with you?' So then we ended up spending a lot of time together, we were like travelling every day to different cities. We used to spend a lot of time together and that's how everything happened." In other news, Gorka is promoting a new tour titled Speakeasy with his Strictly co-star Karen Hauer.
Gorka told us: "We're going to be bringing the audience into what feels like an undercover world, like if they were to go to an underground club, where everything is undercover and secret and very smoky. "It's like a journey through the eras, if you look back through the years, like in the 20s, the 40s then back to the 70s, we have always had those places, where people used to go with their own secrets, play games, or go with their loved one. "Maybe if no one knew they were together, you know, to like, drink smoke, so it will show that through dance, go to the undercover wall, where it's like a magic world.
People can forget about everything and everything is possible." Karen and Gorka tour Speakeasy from Feb 2025 – Tickets are on sale now via.
