Harry Shum Jr. is heading into season 35 of Dancing with the Stars with Jenna Johnson, putting the 44-year-old actor back in front of a broad TV audience as the two-night premiere lands Tuesday, September 15. The pairing is the latest step in a career that has long mixed performance, choreography and screen work.
The timing matters because Shum’s personal life is being searched almost as closely as his dance routines. He has been with Shelby Rabara since 2007, and the two married in Costa Rica in November 2015, more than a decade ago. They also share a daughter, Xia, who was welcomed in March 2019, so the renewed interest around the premiere lands on a family that has already spent years in public view.
Rabara is not just a spouse in the background. She is an actress, dancer and voice performer who has appeared in Glee, 17 Again and 2 Broke Girls, and is recognized as the voice of Peridot in the Steven Universe franchise. She also voiced Snappy in Toy Story 5, attended UCLA before pursuing acting and performed as a member of the Laker Girls. That shared dance history is part of why the couple’s creative overlap has always felt unusually direct.
That overlap shows up in their own work together. Shum and Rabara co-wrote the children’s book Martee Dares to Dance, a project tied to their daughter’s love of movement, and Shum has said their first official date was a trip to see Dreamgirls in 2006. He said they both cried during the show and spent time afterward opening up to each other, then later summed up the relationship in a June 2026 interview by saying it is about loving each other in different stages.
There is a small friction in the way his return to prime-time competition is being framed. Shum is sometimes discussed like a dating headline, but he has been married to Rabara since November 2015, and their relationship has already outlasted the usual celebrity spotlight cycle by a wide margin. What comes next is straightforward: the season 35 premiere will put Shum and Johnson on the floor, and viewers will get the first real read on how his background shapes the competition.
If there is a question worth watching, it is not whether Shum has rhythm. It is how far that experience carries him once the numbers start to matter and the judges’ scores begin to define the run.
