More than a decade into their romance, Stephen "tWitch" Boss has choreographed many a sweet gesture to show wife Allison Holker-Boss just how much he loves her.
There are the Instagram tributes, of course, The Ellen DeGeneres Show's resident DJ and executive producer recently thanking his bride on her 33rd birthday Feb. 7 "for the love, the life, the lessons, the dances, and the memories," noting there's "Nobody better to be growing old with!!!" And there are the "pages and pages of emails" he sent during that first year of courtship when separate work obligations kept them in different corners of the globe for some nine months.
And perhaps most poignant for the couple, who met, first at a party thrown by a fellow So You Think You Can Dance contestant, then as all-stars on the hit series' seventh season in 2010, was the way he fully embraced life with her eldest daughter, Weslie, now 12.
"I didn't allow them to really hang out until six months in, and even then it was slow and for small periods of time," she explained to Dance Spirit in 2012 of her measured approach with her then-toddler. "Eventually it grew to where it is now—it's like she has a second daddy. Their relationship is so beautiful, it makes me want to cry. She loves him so much, and he is such a good example of what a man should be."
Which brings us to his most recent act of good husband behavior, a little thing that's taken on increased importance in this age of staying at home.
"Literally every single day I have new ideas," Allison recently confessed to E! News about how her love of interior design, cooking and "home-making" has manifested itself during the coronavirus pandemic. "And my husband is the best husband because he is so patient with me."
It's gotten to the point that when Weslie is FaceTiming with a friend "they'll be like, 'Did you guys redecorate your house again?'" Allison admitted. And yet tWitch, he of the seemingly perpetual broad grin and unmatched freestyle moves, continues to oblige. "My husband just has to be like, 'Yes, sure.' I'm like, 'Let's get a new couch! We should get new pillows,'" the host of HGTV's Design Star: Next Gen continued. "And he loves me so much and so he allows me the freedom that I need to keep refreshing our home all the time."
If she's being fully honest, having a treasure trove of new decor and meal ideas to cull through was part of her motivation for signing on to host The Incredible Egg Challenge, in which three noted tastemakers flex their cooking, crafting and design skills to win the prized Golden Egg and a donation to the hunger-relief charity of their choice. "I'm always looking for new ways to keep it fun for our family," she explained. "So I thought this was the perfect way to get involved so I could see what the new things were."
And if that means spending the next few weeks in a pastel-hued labyrinth of bunny decor, perfectly curated brunch boards and mounds of crinkle paper, she knows her man will be down. Because one lesson that they've taken away from the last 12 months of 24/7 together-time is they really, really enjoy each other, a small but incredibly crucial detail in any successful union.
Grand gestures are great, romance is certainly important and chemistry can't be faked, but that doesn't amount to anything if you can't have a good time together doing nothing at all.
"Love is key, right, to a relationship. You hear that from everyone," Allison explained. "But I always say that liking each other is key. Like you've got to like the person you're with every single day, you know? So we always make sure that we're teaching each other new skills, keeping it fun and eventful as best we can."
A year into quarantining, that means leaning hard into holidays like Easter, "a really, really special day" in the Boss household because "my son Maddox was actually born on Easter in 2016," Allison shared. This year it falls on Apr. 4, eight days after she, tWitch, Weslie and 16-month-old Zaia will mark his fifth birthday, but the Boss bunch will still do it up with their traditional brunch.
"I do a lot of baking and a lot of cooking," Allison said of the annual fete. "And my daughter, now that she's older, she's the one that's really in charge of making our deviled eggs, which I think is just, like, a household classic."
Weslie will have dozens to work with as egg-decorating is another must. "My kids look so forward to it and my daughter always wants to do tie-dye," said Allison, that type of creativity naturally encouraged in their Los Angeles home.
"For kids, holidays are key," she mused of their trio. "It keeps kids excited, it gives us something to look forward to, especially with the fact that we've been in quarantine for a year now. So I've really leaned into these holidays. And I already do, but with the quarantine aspect of it, it's like even more heightened. Because I want to make sure that they're still creating memories even though we're in the same house every single day."
And should their crew need any necessary jarring, there's a treasure trove of family fun to be witnessed on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube with their Boss Family Workouts, sprung from a need to keep it moving as the world ground to a halt.
Though they'd built two successful careers, an entire brand, really, from dancing, "when quarantine happened, we were like, we've got to really make sure we're working out," she explained. "Because we're just going to be sitting here and I'm going to be baking and cooking every single day, so we have to make sure we're staying active."
And as they plotted out ways to infuse their days with cardio, we were "imagining so many other families at home that might not have fitness equipment anymore and obviously their gyms were all closed," noted Allison. "So we were like, we know we're kind of struggling with figuring out how we're going to stay active, so let's do what we can to really bring people on this journey with us."
That includes their little ones, already budding hoofers who see movement as a way of life.
"I think our parenting skills are kind of built around the idea of them just seeing it," Allison explained of their tactics for getting their kids pumped about exercise. "So instead of just trying to teach my kids it's important to stay active, just having them see us stay active."
They're careful not to force their kids to take part in cooking healthy meals or joining family workouts, "But the fact is, it's happening every single day, so they just kind of end up participating," she said. "That's what we're trying to instill in their future. It's not necessarily going to be, 'Oh, my mom told me I should work out.' It's, no, this is just already instilled that we do do these things every single day. So that's our way."
It goes back to their whole raison d'être as a family.
"We like to play—that's a huge motivation for who we are as parents with our kids is we like to play and stay active with them," Allison explained. "And I think it's such a hard lesson as a parent that it's really easy sometimes to get lost in just, like, the daily tasks of work and bills."
And while they absolutely take care of business, the two each holding a lengthy collection of job titles between them, "We play with our kids. We celebrate the holidays. We make sure that we're really creating a space where it's fun for them to be living, you know?" she said. "We wanted to, of course, talk about the real topics of life. We never ignore those things. But we're really making sure they're getting an element that life is a playground that is meant for us to live."