Karina Smirnoff was born Karina Smirnova in Kharkiv, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union on January 2, 1978. When she was five years old, she began taking ballet lessons, followed by gymnastics, aerobics, figure skating, ballroom dancing and piano. She chose to pursue ballroom dancing. In 1992, Smirnoff emigrated to the United States, and is reportedly a naturalized United States citizen.
She is a graduate of Fordham University, where she majored in both economics and information system programming. Smirnoff originally wanted to go to law school, but instead, her passion for dancing led her to win the US Open thrice, the Asian Open twice and the Dutch Open and the US National Professional Championships five times. She has trained under famous dance coaches such as Espen Salsberg, Donnie Burns, Tone Nyhagen and Ralf Lepehne, and was given a small role in the dance movie Shall We Dance?, where she shared the screen with fellow dancer Tony Dovolani.
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