STEPHEN TWITCH' BOSS' WIDOW ALLISON HOLKER: I Didn't Know He Was Going Through So Much'

THE DANCER OPENS UP ABOUT HER LATE HUSBAND’S SECRET DEMONS—AND HOPES TO HELP OTHERS WHO ARE STRUGGLING SILENTLY

- MELODY CHIU

Since her husband, Stephen “tWitch” Boss, died by suicide in December 2022 at age 40, Allison Holker has endured an emotional tsunami. Early on she felt grief so deep her bones ached. Shortly after came an unbridled rage. “The last two years I was hit with blow after blow after blow,” says Holker, settled on a couch in the light-filled living room of her new Los Angeles-area home. “I have been trying to release all this anger, and I’m learning there’s always going to be a moment when I get really sad or really angry or get really confused.”

For the first time, Holker, 36, is opening up about the demons that took hold of Boss in his final months. In the weeks after the longtime Ellen DeGeneres Show co-executive producer and DJ’s shocking death, she discovered he had been secretly struggling with drug addiction. “He was wrestling with a lot inside himself, and he was trying to self-medicate and cope with all those feelings because he didn’t want other people to take on his pain,” says Holker, who also learned through Boss’s journals that he had suffered sexual abuse as a child. “It was a really scary moment in my life to figure that out, but it also helped me process that he was hiding so much, and there must have been a lot of shame in that.”