Anton Du Beke is usually the man who brings laughter, sparkle and infectious energy to Strictly Come Dancing.

But behind the polished suits, quick wit and ballroom glamour lies a deeply personal chapter of his life that still has the power to overwhelm him with emotion.

The much-loved Strictly judge has spoken candidly about watching his wife, Hannah Summers, live with endometriosis — a painful condition that complicated their hopes of becoming parents and eventually led them down the emotionally demanding path of IVF.

For me, what makes Anton’s story so moving is not simply that the couple eventually welcomed the children they had dreamed of.

It is the helplessness in his words.

He could stand beside the woman he loved. He could hold her hand, comfort her and promise to do anything she needed.

But he could not take the physical pain away from her.

And that, he admitted, was incredibly difficult to live with.

Anton knew Hannah would be a wonderful mother

Anton and Hannah reportedly first met at Wentworth Golf Club in Surrey in 2012.

As their relationship developed, Anton began seeing something in Hannah that made him imagine a future beyond the dance floor.

He watched the way she interacted with her nephews — the kindness, patience and natural warmth she showed them — and became convinced she would make an extraordinary mother.

That realisation made the reality of her health struggles even harder for him to understand.

Speaking previously on Giovanna Fletcher’s Happy Mum Happy Baby podcast, Anton reflected emotionally on how unfair the situation seemed.

Hannah had endometriosis, a condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows elsewhere in the body. It can cause significant pain and, for some women, fertility difficulties.

Anton admitted that before Hannah’s experience, he had known very little about the condition.

But suddenly it was no longer an abstract medical term.

It was affecting the woman he loved.

And it was threatening the future they desperately hoped to build together.

He struggled to make sense of how someone he believed was so naturally suited to motherhood could face such an enormous obstacle.

In his eyes, it felt deeply unfair — almost impossibly cruel.

His comments reveal something many partners of people living with chronic conditions may recognise: the frustration of desperately wanting to fix something that simply cannot be fixed with love alone.

“All I can do is hold your hand”

Eventually, Anton and Hannah began IVF treatment.

Their journey would ultimately bring them extraordinary happiness, but Anton has never forgotten what Hannah physically endured along the way.

He recalled the injections.

The bruising.

The anxiety.

The uncertainty.

And the emotional pressure that surrounded every stage of treatment.

Talking about it years later still affected him deeply.

“It makes me emotional every time I talk about it,” Anton admitted.

That sentence, for me, says almost everything.

IVF is sometimes described through statistics — success rates, treatment cycles and medical procedures.

But behind those clinical words are real people living through days of hope followed by fear, waiting for results that can change the direction of their lives.

Anton witnessed that reality from beside his wife.

He remembered seeing the physical evidence of treatment on Hannah’s body, including bruising caused by repeated injections.

As her husband, he desperately wanted to share the burden.

But there were limits to what he could do.

He could not undergo the injections for her.

He could not absorb the physical effects of treatment.

He could not guarantee that everything they were going through would end with the baby they dreamed of holding.

He could only be there.

“All I can do is hold your hand,” he explained while reflecting on the experience.

There is something incredibly powerful about that admission.

Sometimes loving someone means wanting to protect them from everything.

And sometimes the hardest reality is discovering that you simply cannot.

Their long-awaited dream became two

Thankfully, Anton and Hannah’s story eventually reached the moment they had hoped for.

Their IVF treatment was successful on their first attempt, and in 2017 they welcomed twins George and Henrietta.

After all the uncertainty surrounding their path to parenthood, suddenly there were two babies to love.

The couple also married that same year, beginning an entirely new chapter together as husband and wife and as parents.

Knowing what came before makes their family story feel even more poignant.

The photographs people now see of Anton and Hannah with their twins capture smiling parents and growing children.

But behind those images is a journey filled with private fear, medical treatment and moments when the future may have felt painfully uncertain.

That is why Anton’s words about Hannah carry such weight.

He was not simply describing IVF as an observer.

He was describing what it felt like to watch the person he loved put her body through something extraordinarily demanding because they shared the same dream.

A condition Anton believes deserves far more attention

His experience also changed the way Anton viewed women’s health.

Before Hannah, he acknowledged that he did not fully understand endometriosis or the enormous effect it can have on someone’s life.

Watching his wife live with the condition changed that.

Anton has since spoken about the need for greater awareness and investment in women’s health — an issue that extends far beyond his own family.

For many women, receiving an endometriosis diagnosis can follow years of unexplained pain and uncertainty.

And while every person’s experience is different, Anton’s reflections highlight something that can sometimes be overlooked: chronic illness does not affect only the person receiving the diagnosis.

It can shape relationships, family plans and hopes for the future.

For Anton and Hannah, it became intertwined with one of the biggest questions of their lives — whether they would ever become parents.

Behind the ballroom smile was a husband who felt helpless

As Anton reaches another milestone in his life and continues his journey as one of the most recognisable faces associated with Strictly Come Dancing, his reflections on Hannah reveal a very different side to the entertainer viewers know so well.

On television, Anton has spent decades appearing confident and composed.

He knows how to perform under pressure.

He knows how to recover when something goes wrong.

He knows how to smile beneath the lights.

But none of those skills could prepare him for watching Hannah go through something he could not control.

That is the part of his story that stayed with me most.

His greatest frustration was not about himself.

It was knowing the woman he loved was hurting and being unable to simply make that pain disappear.

He could offer his hand.

He could stand beside her.

He could tell her he was there.

Sometimes, that was all he had to give.

Years later, Anton can look at George and Henrietta and see the beautiful outcome of a journey that once contained so much uncertainty.

Yet the emotion clearly has not disappeared.

Perhaps it never will.

Because behind the joy of becoming a father is the memory of everything Hannah endured to make that dream possible.

And beneath Anton Du Beke’s famous ballroom smile is a husband who will never forget watching the woman he loves fight through pain, uncertainty and fear for the family they longed to have.

Their story ultimately became one of happiness.

But Anton’s words are also a powerful reminder that behind every IVF journey and every struggle with a condition such as endometriosis, there can be a story the outside world never fully sees — one of injections, waiting, tears, hope and someone quietly holding a hand because, in that moment, it is the only thing they can do.