Why Dancing With The Stars' Maks And Karina Split

Karina Smirnoff and Maksim Chmerkovskiy were the dance world's prime duo. Tweets explain the split.

By Kristine Gasbarre — Written on Sep 09, 2009

The jig's up for Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Karina Smirnoff.

According to People, Karina's rep confirmed yesterday that the pair have called off their engagement.

Dancing With the Stars' Maks, 28, proposed to Karina, 31, in January of this year. The diamond appeared to end Maks' reputation as the show's untouchably macho stud and Karina's misfortune in love (remember her embarassing fling with dance partner Mario Lopez?). They began dating around this time last year, and Maks told reporters that he'd secretly loved Karina for a long time. For years she'd laughed off his advances but finally realized she had feelings for him too.

The engagement seemed the fairy tale ending to their rapport as colleagues and a fresh, new meaning to the word "partner." So what happened? In July they finally set a wedding date of June 2010 when their hectic Broadway schedules reportedly got in the way. "We don't plan," Maks has been quoted as saying. "We're rehearsing 14 hours a day."

Karina added, "We were supposed to pick the place, but we've never actually had the time to go further [with the plans]."

Was the wedding not enough of a priority for Karina? Last March OK! reported that Maks had taken a lead with the planning, and Karina said she'd go along with whatever he wanted. And based on each of their Twitter updats over the last few days, Karina initiated the split. For the last few days she's been tweeting happily about progress with her new DWTS partner Aaron Carter, and three weeks ago she tweeted about how she and Maks were disagreeing over decorating their home. According to Yahoo! OMG, yesterday, Maks tweeted, "What was meant to be a 'life long book', turned into a 'chapter'.......and now that 'chapter' is finished...... Se la vie..." (The post was removed before the researching of this story.) Yep, looks like Maks is groveling, even though AOL is reporting he dumped Karina because she's "too high maintenance" and "lacked independence."

However they'll stay a team to fulfill their obligation to dance together at this year's Emmys on Septemer 20 but will no longer share a dressing room, according to EW.com.

The new season of Dancing With the Stars begins September 21. Maksim's partner is Entourage's Debi Mazar, whom he tweeted about last Friday: "The cruel reality...I must admit, I really enjoy spending time with Debi!"

Sound like too many partners on the cha-cha floor...maybe it's no wonder Karina had her doubts.