The Hough family patriarch is originally from Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and met future wife Mariann Heaton on the ballroom team at Ricks College (now Brigham Young University-Idaho).
Bruce and Mariann—both from Mormon families and the children of ballroom-dancing parents—settled in Salt Lake City. There he worked as a communications executive and co-founded supplement maker Nutraceutical Corporation, which, according to Deseret News, reached a valuation of $300 million under his watch before it was sold in 2017.
Bruce also ventured into politics, serving two terms as state Republican Party chair and running for congress in 2023.
While he didn’t win that race, he told Deseret News at the time that he was running for his family’s future. “I’ve got 10 kids, I’ve got 22 grandkids and growing,” he explained. “And I really feel that America’s promise is in jeopardy for those grandkids especially.”
Of his most famous offspring, he quipped, “I never thought that those dance lessons would pay off,” noting that he took the most pride in hearing from others that son Derek Hough and daughter Julianne Hough were some of the “kindest people…in the entertainment business.”
In addition to Derek and Julianne, Bruce shares daughters Sharee Hough Selman, Marabeth Poole and Katherine Hough with Mariann. After they divorced in the late 1990s, he married Debra Francom Hough, also a parent of five.