Proving once again that dancing a three-person duet just doesn't work, a former Hooters calendar model says she unknowingly cut in on Mario Lopez and his Dancing With the Stars partner, Karina Smirnoff.
Hooters gal Meagan Cooper tells E! she and Lopez carried on a secret romance for almost a year while he publicly dated Smirnoff (the Dancing duo recently split).
"He told me he lived alone," recalls Cooper, "but I opened up [his] closet and saw a row of women's shoes and said, 'Either you are a cross-dresser or a woman is living here.'"
"Mario said Karina just left her stuff there and was moving it out. He kept telling me that he and Karina were broken up."
The aspiring singer/songwriter, who is promoting her role in the ABC reality series I Survived a Japanese Game Show, says she and Lopez remained romantic up until March, but adds:
"We're not friends anymore. He's really pissed. He's like, 'You're not supposed to talk to [press],' but when you make me look like a total whore, I'm going to tell somebody about it," Cooper says.
"He's a really great guy, don't get me wrong. He's a really nice person. He has a lot of great qualities, but he was not the most faithful person in the world," says Cooper.
A rep for Lopez declined to comment on Cooper's allegations.
—Reporting by Matt Donnelly