Sports / Film & TV
Meryl Davis
born 1987 · ice dancer, Olympic champion
Royal Oak-born ice dancer who, with childhood friend Charlie White, trained in metro Detroit and won America's first Olympic ice-dance gold in 2014.
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Meryl Davis was born in Royal Oak on New Year's Day 1987 and raised in West Bloomfield Township, where she first skated at age five on a local lake. In 1997 her coach Seth Chafetz paired her with Charlie White, whose family lived about ten minutes away; their parents were close friends. She graduated from Wylie E. Groves High School in 2005 and studied cultural anthropology at the University of Michigan while training at the Arctic Edge Arena in Canton under Igor Shpilband and Marina Zoueva, the rink that made metro Detroit a world capital of ice dance. Davis and White won Olympic silver in Vancouver in 2010, two world titles and, at Sochi in 2014, the first Olympic ice-dance gold for the United States. That spring she also won season 18 of Dancing with the Stars.
Highlights
- 2014 Olympic ice-dance champion with Charlie White, the first for the U.S.
- Olympic silver (2010) and team bronze (2014)
- World champions 2011 and 2013; six U.S. titles (2009–2014)
- Won Dancing with the Stars season 18 (2014)
- Longest-lasting U.S. ice-dance team, together since 1997
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 2
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Studied here · 2001–2005
Wylie E. Groves High School
Davis graduated from this Birmingham Public Schools high school in June 2005.
Played here · 2000s–2014
Arctic Edge Arena
The Canton rink where Davis and White trained with Igor Shpilband and Marina Zoueva, staying with Zoueva after Shpilband's 2012 dismissal.