Back to the ballroom! Artem Chigvintsev is set to make his return to the Dancing With the Stars tour this week following his brief exit, Us Weekly confirms.
The Russia native, 39, announced in January that he was stepping away from the tour due to “unexpected health issues.” At the time, the professional dancer wrote via Instagram that he hoped to “recover as quickly as possible” so that he could get back to performing.
Later that month, Brie Bella shared an update on how her soon-to-be brother-in-law was feeling, hinting that he was suffering from something on the more serious side.
“He’s doing a lot better, which is so great,” Nikki Bella‘s twin sister, 38, told Us exclusively. “I know it’s really made him feel good seeing everyone just reaching out and thinking of him and sending their thoughts and prayers his way.”
Brie noted that while the ballroom pro did test positive for the coronavirus midway through the tour, he also had “something more than COVID.”
Chigvintsev kept his fans in the loop throughout his recovery process, revealing via social media earlier this month that he was still on the mend. “I had another x-ray done yesterday, and it came back still positive for pneumonia, so I just got another set of antibiotics,” he explained in an Instagram Story on February 3. “Hopefully, this one will do the magic, will do the trick, to kick out the pneumonia out of my lungs.”
Several weeks later, his 38-year-old fiancée told Entertainment Tonight that he was “doing well” but still had some traces of pneumonia in his system.
“I could just tell there was something wrong, and something more [serious], so I was like, ‘He needs to see a doctor!'” Nikki recalled on February 12. “I was the one who was like, ‘We need to get him to a doctor.’ So, it’s been scary for a while, and we’re just hoping it heals because it’s his lungs.”
The Total Bellas star shares son Matteo, 18 months, with Chigvintsev, and previously opened up about the challenges of raising their little one while her future husband is on the road. The couple announced their engagement in January 2020 and welcomed their baby boy that July.
“This is the longest we haven’t seen each other. We went six or seven weeks [apart],” the former pro wrestler explained during a November 2021 episode of “The Bellas Podcast” while Chigvintsev was in the midst of rehearsals for season 30 of DWTS. “I got AGT: Extreme … [and] Artem and I both discussed, Teo goes everywhere with mama. That’s where he’s comfortable, that’s where he does best. And, you know, it’s been hard on [Artem] and it’s been hard on me, too, not to have my man in my bed.”
At the time, the California native gushed that she and Chigvintsev were “in a good spot” after their relationship was “a little rocky” while they were apart, adding, “[We] had to get back into therapy. You know, distance is really hard. … Now we’re stronger than ever.”
