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Burke calls her model boyfriend Maxwell Zagorski a "great influence in [her] life."
"He loves to go to the gym and he motivates me, so it's a good relationship we have!" Burke told PEOPLE at the 2009 Ivy Bethune Tri-Union Diversity Awards in L.A., where she was being honored (along with actor George Takei). "He's a model and so he needs to keep his body in shape, as well."
Their relationship, she said, is "going great," but she noted that he's also played a major role in helping her to stay healthy and keep her new beach body looking hot.
"I'm at the studio teaching a lot but my boyfriend is a health freak, so we go to the gym about like five, six times a week," said Burke, who recently opened the third Cheryl Burke Dance studio, in Mountain View, Calif. "I'm on the treadmill running a lot and we do lots of weight training."
But even for this Hollywood couple, sometimes it's just about staying in and taking it slow. "We're just homebodies," Burke said, adding that romance is as simple as just being together and hanging out. "We like to watch movies. I like to stay at home. He loves to cook. And we just watch movies and we eat at home."
Dancing with the Stars kicks off its ninth season in August and Burke hopes to squeeze in one more Caribbean vacation before it's back to the grind.
"We've been going on a couple vacations and hopefully we can squeeze one more in," she said. "I love the Caribbean, so somewhere there!"
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