(Photo Credit: Korea Joongang Daily)
SALT LAKE CITY – She calls herself a shy girl raised in Bluffdale, but, she and her husband are now living like megastars half a world away. So, how did this Utahn become famous in South Korea? Her husband is the drummer for an extremely popular KPop group called Busker Busker.
Dani Moore and her husband, Brad, have been married since 2012. They met each other while they were both students at the University of Miami at Ohio. One day, she got a job offer to teach in Korea. He moved with her and eventually got a job, too, and one of his students asked if he wanted to join a band.
“A couple weeks later, they asked, ‘Hey, you want to be on this TV show?” It’s called Super Starcade. It’s like their American Idol,” he says.
That show lasted nine weeks, and it was brutal for both of them.
“On the TV show, I was locked away for nine weeks, and I didn’t have access to Dani. They took our phones. They took our money,” he says.
Dani says, “We didn’t talk. We didn’t see each other.”
While in that house, Brad had constant rehearsals and was kept on a strict diet of mostly salad and tofu. Even when Dani was able to go to the live tapings, security guards made sure the couple didn’t see each other.
She says, “People didn’t want me in the same room as him. There were times when we’d be going someplace and we’d be separated by all of his fans. Or, security would try to keep me out, because they didn’t know who I was.”
Eventually, Busker Busker came in second in the competition, which Brad says was a blessing in disguise. They weren’t obligated to work for that production company like the winners of the competition were. However, they were so popular the producers begged them to come back. The group agreed, and Brad demanded Dani have access to the band at all times, which was the exact opposite of how things had been until then.
Since the competition in 2012, they’ve released 11 number one songs, including one called Cherry Blossom Ending.
Brad says, “It’s the only song in Korean KPop history to hit number one, twice.”
Along with the fame comes some wild fans. Brad says most of his fans are “chill” but there have been some crazy scenes. For instance, once their driver made a wrong turn and their fans tried to flip their van over. Plus, there was the time when he had to slap a fan’s hand away from their lead singer, and that fan immediately sniffed her own hand to see if she could get a whiff of Brad. But, apart from that… “chill.”
Their wedding made national news in Korea, and Dani says she has her own KPop fan base, who assume she has a job within the band.
“They’re really sweet. They come up and ask for pictures, sometimes. They gave us wedding gifts. They give me little cards that say, ‘Keep up the good work,’” she says.
Dani’s life is not what she imagined it would be. However, she and Brad say they’ve fallen in love with their lives in Korea.
Dani says, “It definitely took some twists and turns that were very surreal. I know it’s our story, but I hear it and I ask, ‘Did that really happen to us?’”
