David Charvet is sharing rare insight into his marriage with ex-wife Brooke Burke prior to their 2020 divorce.
“I promised Brooke at the time that I would be a very present father,” the Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test star, 54, said while appearing on the Tuesday, November 3, episode of the “Sibling Revelry” podcast. “I didn’t have that. I had a great stepdad that was always around. My real father and I didn’t have that kind of relationship.”
Charvet — who shares daughter Heaven, 19, and son, Shaya, 18, with Burke — noted that he wanted to handle coparenting in a “different” way by prioritizing fatherhood.
“I wanted to be the first person that they saw every morning. I wanted to be the last person that they heard at night before they went to bed,” the former Baywatch star explained. “I wanted to be at every single event because I remember sometimes being in a situation where I was at my own events and, you know, I would look around, and there [weren’t] certain people there, which was tough.”
Charvet, who split from the former Dancing With the Stars host in 2018, noted that being part of his kids’ lives was the best decision he could have made.
“I wanted to be an incredible father for them,” he shared. “For me, my legacy [is] my children.”
Now that his and Burke’s daughter and son are young adults, Charvet said, “It’s the most beautiful reward to be able to sit today and to see your kids be good human beings.”
Charvet, who grew up in France before making a splash in Hollywood on Baywatch in 1992 and later Melrose Place, noted that his acting and singing career had to end in order to be the best dad.
He recalled that around the time he stepped back from acting in 2013, most of the filming was moving from Los Angeles to Canada, which didn’t work for him.
“When you went to Canada it wasn’t for like a week or two it was for months,” Charvet remembered. “I also had a singing career. I was touring in 42 different countries. I was gone for five years.”
The entertainer noted, “For me I was like, ‘So, are you going to be a good dad or are you going to be that guy?’” and he chose to be a present parent.
“I gave up everything, which was crazy by the way,” Charvet told podcast cohost Oliver Hudson. “I look back and go, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of giving up.’”
Despite sacrificing his career, Charvet said he wouldn’t change a thing.
“When you look at the process and everything that I’ve experienced with my babies, I would do it again,” he shared.
Charvet’s last acting credit was 2013’s Prisoners of the Sun. He later appeared on one episode of Burke’s Breaking Bread with Brooke Burke in 2015 and made a cameo on a 2017 episode of The Apprentice.
Most recently, Charvet joined the season 5 cast of Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test, which is currently airing on Fox.
Charvet’s relationship with Burke lasted more than a decade. The pair began dating in 2006 and tied the knot in St. Bart’s in August 2011. They went on to welcome Heaven Rain in January 2007 and Shaya Braven in March 2008. (Burke is also the mother of daughters Neriah, 26, and Sierra, 24, whom she shares with first husband Garth Fisher.)
Us confirmed in April 2018 that Burke filed for divorce from Charvet after nearly seven years of marriage.
Their divorce was finalized in May 2020, with the exes agreeing to equal custody of their two children.
