Amanda Kloots says she felt more comfortable dating widowers after Nick Cordero's death
Amanda Kloots has been on an emotional rollercoaster following the highly publicized death of her husband, Broadway star Nick Cordero, from COVID in July 2020.
Since that time, the dancer and TV personality, 40, has spoken with raw vulnerability about grief, resilience and how she's open to finding love again. In a new interview on Cheryl Burke's podcast, Diving Deep, Kloots gets brutally honest about the criticism she faced for entering the dating scene nearly one year after Cordero's death.
"For me, with Nick, it took me a while to feel OK and put my toe in the water," she told Burke about dating again. "The first few dates I went on were with other widowers. So, that immediately helped break down the discomfort."
"I’m coming in with a lot of emotional baggage," noted Kloots, who had son Elvis, 3, with Cordero, adding that the benefit of dating widower is that "you don't have to explain yourself."
Talking about grief on dates, she noted, actually proved healing for both parties.
"Let’s get down and dirty and talk about some life experience," she said. "It's what makes everybody interesting, and I want to find out who you are, now, from that, and [how you grew] from that horrible place."
On the other hand, she explained, "when you sit down and talk about losing your loved one and you start crying with somebody, then it pretty much kills a lot of romantic vibes."
Adding insult to injury, Kloots said she faced heavy "criticism" for dating "not even a year after Nick had died."
"I just nipped it in the bud and was like, absolutely not," she said of countering the critical commenters. In fact, she used the opportunity to highlight stories of other widows so that online trolls might better understand the nuance that comes with dating again.
"I started interviewing other widows live on Instagram, and I put a face to what people were calling a 'horrible thing,'" she said. "I was like, let’s talk about dating after you lose somebody. And I was like, let’s get into the honest truth about it because everyone’s judging me, and us, for doing this."
"The second I did that, [the criticism] stopped," she pointed out.
Addressing misconceptions head-on has been part of her coping strategy, says Kloots.
"It’s really hard," she says of handling misinformation about her online. "'Oh, she’s having a really hard time doing it. She’s not. Oh, I thought she’s just like being a whore and is already married and secretly engaged and pregnant. No guys. No. I’m literally just going for a coffee and I’m crying the whole way there, and I’m crying the whole way home — and two days after, It's like, does that make you feel any better? Can you judge me less now?"
Kloots has also been an open book about she's approached single parenting and dating following Cordero's death.
In a December 2022 interview on the Not Skinny But Not Fat podcast, hosted by Amanda Hirsch, she talked about navigating "mom guilt."
"Being a single parent is hard. It's really, really hard," she said at the time. "The day-to-day things of being a single parent, it's just a lot, especially right now. [Elvis] is starting to really have opinions and talk back to me, and test me. He doesn't want me to leave and doesn't want me to go to dinner because he wants me to stay home with him, so there's a lot of mom guilt coming in right now. So it's really hard."
"I am not gonna pretend that I do this on my own. I've hired help," The Talk co-host added. "I have friends that help. I have grandparents that come when I have to go film a movie and stay with him for three weeks."
In fact, when she performed on ABC's Dancing With the Stars in 2021 (placing fourth), her parents moved to Los Angeles for three months to care for Elvis.
"They are rockstar grandparents and I could not do it without them," she said.
Wellness, parenting, body image and more: Get to know the who behind the hoo with Yahoo Life’s newsletter. Sign up here.
