Amber Glenn has the complete support of her family whether she’s gliding across the ice or sashaying onto the Dancing With the Stars ballroom floor.
“My mom was a huge contributing factor to my success at a young age,” Glenn told People in 2024. “Then, of course, my dad worked so, so hard to financially pay for it. I mean, getting into figure skating, I had no idea it was … not a cheap sport. He worked so hard to be able to get the best opportunities for me.”
Amber’s parents and her sister, Brooke, also wholeheartedly supported the athlete when she publicly came out as bisexual.
“She was the first person I came out to,” Amber said on Megan Rapinoe’s “Why Are You Like This?” podcast in October 2026, praising their sibling dynamic. “She … was there for me throughout the whole process. She was the first to ask me how my first date with a girl went and how everything was; the first to really accept me for me.”
Amber continued, “I always knew that, no matter what, how a skating competition went, how I skated, that I was still her older sister. She still loved me. And, of course, she’s not the only one.”
Scroll below to meet Amber’s family:
Richard Glenn
Amber’s dad worked hard to afford his daughter’s skating costs.
“For the most part they say for a senior level skater, the cost of training is anywhere from $75 to $100,000 a year,” he told a Texas NBC affiliate in 2014. “I never wanted it to be, ‘Well I didn’t reach my goals because my dad didn’t make enough money or we didn’t have the support from the family,’ that type of thing.”
At the time, Amber noted that she wanted a pro skating career “so bad.”
“There are so many girls who say they want it, but they don’t really want to put the effort in and I’m fine with putting in all the effort,” the then-aspiring athlete said. “I will work until I’m sleeping on the ice. I just want it so bad.”
Amber is now a three-time national champion and made her Olympics debut in 2026. She walked away with a gold medal in the team event.
Cathlene Glenn
To help afford Amber’s skating tuition and equipment costs, her mom also took a job as a nanny for her daughter’s coach.
“She loves to skate with emotion,” Cathlene told The New York Times in March 2025 of supporting her daughter’s dreams. “She wants to feel her feelings out on the ice. I think that [skating] was very therapeutic for her.”
Brooke Glenn
Amber is almost two years older than her sibling, growing a deep friendship as they got older.
“For a while growing up, we weren’t the closest ‘cause she had stopped skating pretty young,” Amber said on Megan Rapinoe’s podcast in October 2026. “As I got into those teenage years, she was going to public school, I was still training and I was still recovering through my mental health journey.”
She continued, “I felt like I had to earn almost that friendship and that bond throughout time, which has made it even more special to me.”
Amber will pay tribute to her sister during Dancing With the Stars’ Dedication Night later that month in a contemporary routine with pro partner Pasha Pashkov set to Sia’s “Breathe Me.”
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