Ben Cohen and Kristina Rihanoff have sold their family home for £1.75 million – just weeks after announcing they had ended their 12 year relationship, MailOnline can reveal.
The five-bedroom home in Sywell, Northamptonshire, was initially put on the market in September after the couple’s financial woes were laid bare in court.
Ben, 46, had pleaded poverty in August when Kristina, 47, was caught driving without insurance, claiming he was ‘fighting to save his relationship and his home’.
Both battles the former England rugby player appears to have now sadly lost with the property the pair bought in 2016 for £950,000 being put on the market just one month after the court case.
Then at the beginning of March the couple announced their split with friends claiming that financial troubles over the past six months had torn their relationship apart.
It has since been claimed the pair, who share an eight-year-old daughter called Mila, have been left with a crippling £1million worth of debt, with two of their wellbeing and yoga businesses not filing accounts for four years.
Following the split announcement, a friend of the couple told MailOnline: ‘The past six months have been hell for them and it has torn the love they had apart. For the sake of their family, they have chosen to go forward as separate individuals.
‘Those close to them who know them as a couple had hoped they would be able to work things out but for now it’s over and it looks like there’s no going back.’
Cohen (right) said he was ‘fighting to save his relationship and home’
The five-bedroom home in Sywell, Northamptonshire (pictured) was bought in 2016 and was put up for sale on Thursday, September 19
The home has a large kitchen area with granite worktops, recessed lighting and a large central island unit, as well as an integrated wine fridge, wine racks and breakfast bar area
The couple’s relationship was perhaps the most infamous product of the so-called Strictly curse after they met on the show in 2013, before Ben left his then wife Abby, whom he shared two daughters with, for the Russian star.
Ben and Abby had been childhood sweethearts, meeting when they were just 17. When the former world cup winner announced he was leaving the pair had been married for 13 years with two daughters.
He previously insisted nothing happened with Kristina during their partnership on the BBC dance competition, yet after their journey on the show came to an end he developed feelings so strong that he walked away from his marriage.
At the time, Abby’s anger was palpable, telling The Sun: ‘My husband, who I was with for 23 years, unconditionally loved and was completely loyal to in every respect, has left me for a f**king Russian dancer.’
But following the news that Ben and Kristina were splitting, she felt more sympathy for the sportsman – who she described as her teenage girls’ hero.
‘I’m sad for Ben,’ she told MailOnline. ‘I do feel sorry for him. Our marriage broke down and it’s happening all over again to him, and he’s got another child.
‘He’s got to start again from nothing, in his late forties. He’s going from being so successful as a rugby player to [people] now reading of his business failures.’
Ben and Kristina had been left with crippling debts after they ploughed every penny they had into a yoga studio which plunged into crisis during the Covid pandemic.
It is described as a ‘superb family home offering spacious and versatile living accommodation’ kitted out with an ‘impressive kitchen breakfast/family living area’
One of the five bedrooms in Cohen and Rihanoff’s home
After it came to light that accounts for two of their companies hadn’t been filed in four years, Companies House tried to force their closure, with creditors intervening to suspend the businesses being struck off.
Soo Yoga Group, which is owned by the couple, was £488,470 in the red in its last submitted set of accounts for the year ending on July 31, 2022.
It owes £450,000 to creditors and £190,000 to Kristina’s other firm, Bespoke Ballroom Ltd.
The extent of their struggles were laid bare in unusual circumstances – during a court appearance last September when Kristina was caught driving without insurance.
Unbeknown until the court case – where Ben also admitted he had bungled the handling of the insurance – he said: ‘I get up every day and I fight not to lose everything – to lose my cars and my house and my relationship. I’m so overdrawn.’
When questioned about the strains on his and Kristina’s relationship, he said: ‘We’re still living together. We’re in it financially.
‘We’re in business together so the problem is that we opened the business before Covid and we got the worst severities of it and in all honestly this is just another problem for me to deal with.
‘I’ve got credit cards that are overdrawn. I’m overdrawn in both accounts. We have got a business debt because of Covid. It’s just another problem.’
Speaking to MailOnline in 2021, the couple revealed the irony of how they set off full of hope on a project to improve health and wellbeing only to be plunged into a crisis which left them facing losing everything and damaging their mental health.
Russian-born Kristina – who left Strictly in 2015 before giving birth to their daughter – had worked hard to retrain as a yoga instructor.
The studio offered dance, meditation and pilates classes while Ben taught high intensity training.
The property has a spacious sitting room with double doors providing access to the property’s gardens and grounds
Another living area in the house with a fitted media cabinet, display shelving, cupboards and drawers
But they were forced to close the seven-studio yoga centre when the pandemic struck just nine months after opening.
Kristina told MailOnline: ‘The company is a new company we’d just set it up. We invested everything we’ve ever had.
It was awful. I put everything into it and you don’t even have a chance to develop the business.
‘We opened in August after the first lockdown and had a huge spike. It’s a family orientated centre. Then November lockdown, December it was awful because we didn’t know the end of it. It was forever and ever and ever. Fingers crossed we can go back to normality soon.’
The couple had been hustling to try earn some extra cash with Ben last year creating a calendar with 1,000 personally signed editions selling at £32.95 a time in the hope of raking in £33,000.
More recently, he has been posing topless in tiny white underwear for a shoot.
The couple got engaged in the Maldives in 2022 with the hopes of tying the knot in Tuscany or Oxfordshire.
Ben told Hello! Magazine in 2023: ‘Over the last nine years we’ve been through the wringer. To support each other through difficult times in business is the ultimate test in a relationship.
‘I’ve watched her flourish, from her becoming a mum to growing as a businesswoman, and it has strengthened our bond.’
In February 2024 he revealed the pair planned to ‘marry in secret’.
Talking about his ploy for a low-key wedding, host Jeremy Vine asked: ‘Ben, I must ask you about love because you’re getting married soon, aren’t you. You’ve been engaged for a while to the Strictly legend, Kristina.’
‘Yeah, Kristina – no, we’re not, we’re not going to get married yet. Listening to you guys [in the studio], it’s so much going on in the world at the moment,’ the sportsperson answered promptly.
A main hallway with impressive central staircase rising to a galleried area affords access to the main living areas
‘You know, having a business in today’s world is really tough. Not only do we have to deal with Brexit, we’ve gone into Covid and all the lockdowns and three wars and a recession.
So we’ll get our business sorted and concentrate on that and then once things perk up a little bit, we may think about doing it somewhere probably in secret,’ he added.
Sadly the couple’s plans to get married were never fulfilled with a friend telling The Sun at the beginning of the month: ‘Ben left his wife Abby for Kristina, only to now split with her.
‘It’s like the curse in reverse. This will be like karma for Abby, she was so upset when Ben left her. It’s like he has got his comeuppance.’
Their home in Sywell was put on sale shortly after the court hearing and after being on the market for several months, it has now been taken off real estate sites.