DANCE TELEVISION | EXCLUSIVE COVERAGE | WHERE ARE THEY NOW
Alfonso Ribeiro & Witney Carson Win Dancing with the Stars Season 19 — And Return in New Roles for Season 34
From the mirror ball trophy on November 25, 2014 to hosting the ballroom and winning it again eleven years later — a full-circle story that only Dancing with the Stars could write.
By Dance Mogul Magazine | Originally published November 26, 2014 | Updated and expanded September 2026
Alfonso Ribeiro & Witney Carson lift the mirror ball trophy after their Season 19 victory. | Photo: ABC / Dancing with the Stars
Where They Are Now — 2026
Alfonso Ribeiro now co-hosts Dancing with the Stars alongside Julianne Hough, entering his fifth season at the helm for Season 35 in fall 2026. He continues to host America’s Funniest Home Videos, currently in its 36th season on ABC.
Witney Carson made history in November 2025 by winning her second mirror ball trophy — this time with wildlife conservationist Robert Irwin during Season 34, the show’s record-setting 20th anniversary season. She returns for Season 35 partnered with Guillermo Rodriguez.
The Night the Ballroom Belonged to Carlton
On the night of November 25, 2014, the finale of Dancing with the Stars Season 19 delivered one of the most emotionally satisfying wins in the show’s history. Actor Alfonso Ribeiro — forever loved by generations as Carlton Banks from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air — and his professional partner Witney Carson lifted the coveted Len Goodman Mirror Ball Trophy in front of a packed studio audience and millions of viewers watching on ABC.
It was the kind of win the ballroom rewards: months of relentless preparation, a partnership built on trust, and a celebrity contestant who honored the craft of dance rather than treating it as a costume. For Dance Mogul Magazine, covering the moment in real time, the story wasn’t just about who won. It was about a lifelong performer finally standing on a stage that celebrated everything he had trained for since childhood — and a young pro dancer, only twenty-one years old at the time, proving she could carry a champion.
Nearly a decade later, that finale looks even more meaningful. Both Ribeiro and Carson are still central to the Dancing with the Stars franchise — but in roles no one could have predicted the night the confetti fell in 2014.
“I’ve wanted it forever. I don’t even know what to say. These are happy tears.” — Alfonso Ribeiro, moments after winning Season 19
Season 19 by the Numbers: Fall 2014 at ABC
Season 19 of Dancing with the Stars premiered on September 15, 2014 and ran for fifteen episodes through the November 25 finale. It was hosted by Tom Bergeron and Erin Andrews, with judges Carrie Ann Inaba, Len Goodman, Bruno Tonioli, and returning guest judge Julianne Hough. Thirteen celebrities competed. The final three couples were separated by only a handful of points heading into finale night:
- 1st Place — Alfonso Ribeiro & Witney Carson. Finale score: 80 out of 80.
- 2nd Place — Sadie Robertson & Mark Ballas. The Duck Dynasty star finished her season with 78 points.
- 3rd Place — Janel Parrish & Valentin Chmerkovskiy. The Pretty Little Liars actress closed with 77 points.
Season 19 also marked the final competitive season for veteran pro Cheryl Burke before she stepped away when her contract expired — and the moment YouTube personality Bethany Mota became one of the first digital-native creators to compete at the highest level of the ballroom.
Alfonso Ribeiro delivering one of the season’s standout routines. | Photo: ABC / Dancing with the Stars
Why Alfonso Ribeiro Was Never a Surprise
Casual viewers may have expected a Fresh Prince nostalgia run. Dance-industry watchers knew better. Alfonso Ribeiro started his professional career at age eight in the Tony Award–winning Broadway musical The Tap Dance Kid. By the time he was cast opposite Michael Jackson in the iconic 1984 Pepsi commercial — the one during which Jackson’s hair caught fire — he had already been on stages that most working dancers spend a career chasing.
What made Season 19 remarkable wasn’t that Ribeiro could dance. It was that the show gave him room to show ballroom vocabulary — foxtrot, tango, quickstep, Argentine tango — that his sitcom career had never had reason to display. His now-legendary Season 19 jive to Tom Jones’s “It’s Not Unusual,” which incorporated the “Carlton Dance” as a wink to the audience, became one of the most-viewed DWTS clips of the 2010s.
Finale night broadcast capture, November 25, 2014. | ABC screen grab
Watch: The Championship Performances
The original video Dance Mogul Magazine featured with this piece in November 2014 has been preserved. Two additional finale clips have since surfaced on YouTube and are added here so the full arc of Season 19 finale night can be revisited.
Alfonso Ribeiro & Witney Carson — Season 19 performance archive
Season 19 finale broadcast clip preserved from the original 2014 feature
Alfonso & Witney — the freestyle that sealed the trophy on November 24–25, 2014
Where Alfonso & Witney Are Now — And Why This Story Keeps Growing
The full-circle arc of Season 19 has continued to unfold in ways that reshaped both careers.
Alfonso Ribeiro returned to Dancing with the Stars in fall 2022 as co-host, taking over from Tyra Banks when Season 31 moved to Disney+. He has co-hosted every season since, first with Banks and then partnered with Julianne Hough. In a June 2026 Variety cover profile marking the show’s 20th anniversary, Ribeiro described the ballroom as “a safe space — a space where we’re allowing our celebrities to share their true heart” and credited returning showrunner Conrad Green with “bringing the heart back to the show.” Beyond the ballroom, he continues to host America’s Funniest Home Videos, now in its 36th season — the longest-running series in ABC’s prime-time history.
Witney Carson became one of the most consistent professional partners in the show’s modern era. Then in November 2025 — exactly eleven years after her Season 19 win with Ribeiro — she captured a second mirror ball trophy at Season 34, the show’s 20th anniversary edition. Her celebrity partner was twenty-one-year-old wildlife conservationist Robert Irwin, whose sister Bindi Irwin had won Season 21 exactly one decade earlier. The Season 34 finale drew 72 million votes, double the previous year’s tally.
“Robert usually catches me — and there was one time that we did it, and it just like killed his ribs, so I took it out. His health is my No. 1 priority.” — Witney Carson on Good Morning America, November 26, 2025, describing why she rechoreographed the Season 34 finale freestyle after Irwin’s rib injury
The story of the 2025 finale is inseparable from the story of 2014. The same pro dancer who won her first trophy with Alfonso Ribeiro in Season 19 won her second while Ribeiro stood in the host’s spot on the same ballroom floor. Robert Irwin himself, in an interview with Deadline after the win, remembered watching his sister Bindi lift the trophy at eleven years old — and made it clear the crew he trained around during that childhood visit was, in many cases, the same crew still making the show.
Watch: Witney’s Second Mirror Ball Moment (2025)
Robert Irwin & Witney Carson — Season 34 finale freestyle to “Black and Gold” and “The Nights” | ABC / Dancing with the Stars
The character that generations grew up with — and the reference point for one of DWTS’s most viral moments.
Why This Season 19 Story Matters to Dance Mogul
Dance Mogul Magazine has covered Dancing with the Stars since our earliest years because the show does something few television formats manage: it puts trained professional dancers on prime-time television and asks the country to take their craft seriously. Season 19 remains a reference point in that mission. The winner was a Broadway-trained tap dancer given the room to show his full range. The winning pro was a young woman handed the responsibility of steering a champion — and eleven years later, she is still doing it.
For every young dancer reading this: careers in dance rarely follow a straight line. Alfonso Ribeiro trained as a child, ran a decades-long sitcom career, then returned to the discipline that started it all and won at the highest visible platform his industry could offer. Witney Carson competed as a teenager, built a career one season at a time, and only recently reached the second peak of it. DMM’s Dance Styles Hub and our archive of Exclusive Interviews exist for exactly these long-arc stories.
For deeper coverage of the current era of the show, see our companion pieces on the flagship Dancing with the Stars franchise and the newly launched Dancing with the Stars: The Next Pro spinoff hosted by the same Season 34 champion Witney Carson helped train.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did Alfonso Ribeiro win Dancing with the Stars?
Alfonso Ribeiro and pro partner Witney Carson won Season 19 on November 25, 2014, earning a perfect score of 80 across their finale performances at ABC’s two-part finale.
Is Alfonso Ribeiro still on Dancing with the Stars?
Yes. Ribeiro has co-hosted Dancing with the Stars since 2022 (Season 31) and is confirmed to return alongside Julianne Hough for Season 35, premiering September 15, 2026.
Has Witney Carson won Dancing with the Stars more than once?
Yes. Carson won Season 19 with Alfonso Ribeiro in 2014, and in November 2025 she won Season 34 with wildlife conservationist Robert Irwin during the show’s 20th anniversary season.
Who else competed in Dancing with the Stars Season 19?
The Season 19 cast included Sadie Robertson (Duck Dynasty), Janel Parrish (Pretty Little Liars), Bethany Mota (YouTube personality), Lea Thompson, Tommy Chong, Lolo Jones, Betsey Johnson, Antonio Sabato Jr., Michael Waltrip, Tavis Smiley, Randy Couture, and Jonathan Bennett.
Where can I watch Alfonso Ribeiro’s Season 19 performances now?
Highlight clips remain available on ABC’s official Dancing with the Stars YouTube channel and the Disney+ archive. Several of the most-viewed routines — including the jive to “It’s Not Unusual” — are embedded above.
Continue Your Journey
EXPLORE MORE FROM DMM
Dance Styles Hub — every ballroom and Latin discipline seen on DWTS, explained for dancers at every level.
Dancing with the Stars — The Full Season History — every season, every champion, twenty years of the ballroom on ABC.
Dancing with the Stars: The Next Pro — the 2026 spinoff hosted by Season 34 champion Robert Irwin.
Exclusive Interviews Archive — two decades of dancer-first storytelling from Dance Mogul Magazine.
The Story Continues
Every fall, when the ballroom lights come up on ABC, the reference point is still there. The Season 19 trophy is a small pillar of ballroom television history — a champion who never disrespected the craft, a pro who never stopped growing, and a fan base that still shows up on Tuesday nights. As Season 35 premieres on September 15, 2026, Alfonso Ribeiro and Witney Carson will both be in the room. That itself is a legacy.
Dance Mogul Magazine will continue to document those legacies as they unfold. Every dancer who steps onto the DWTS floor — celebrity or professional — is walking a path shaped by everyone who came before. Season 19 is one of the seasons that shaped the path.
© 2026 Dance Mogul Magazine LLC | dancemogul.com | Inspiring Self-Empowerment Through Dance Culture