One warm June afternoon back in 2005, a New Kid, a Bachelorette and a soap actress sashayed onto an L.A. sound stage and the world of ballroom, competitive dance and spray tans was never quite the same.
When the concept of Dancing With the Stars was first floated, the premise was met with a healthy dose of skepticism, even a few outright laughs from the host of a well-known L.A. morning radio program. Sure, they’d scrounged up six celebs to commit weeks of their life to learning the cha-cha and the tango and they were names you’d at least heard before (read: Rachel Hunter, Evander Holyfield, John O’Hurley), but would anyone really take time out of their summer evening to watch Seinfeld‘s J. Peterman shake it in sequins, much less call and vote to keep him around?
A resounding 13 million people said yes, tuning in to see exactly how this experiment borrowed from British TV would turn out. By the second episode, it was the biggest show on network TV and so many viewers loudly voiced their judgment of the July finale that victor Kelly Monaco and runner-up O’Hurley agreed to a dance-off two months later.