Matthew McConaughey’s Mom Called His Wife By Ex-Girlfriends’ Names

Matthew McConaughey’s mom Mary McCabe did not exactly make the best first impression on his wife Camila Alves. When the actor started dating Alves in 2006 after meeting her at a nightclub, he went on to introduce her to his family. And right out of the gate, as Alves shared in a recent interview, McConaughey’s mom tested her in ways that got under her skin. For good reason.

Alves sat down for a chat with Southern Living’s Biscuits & Jam podcast and shared a little background about her relationship with her mother-in-law. “She did all these things when I first came in the picture, right? And she was really testing me. I mean, really testing me,” she explained. “She would call me by all of Matthew’s ex-girlfriends’ names, she would start speaking Spanish with me in a very broken way, kind of putting down a bit. I mean, all kinds of stuff.”

Keep in mind, McConaughey’s mom famously lied to her son when he didn’t win Little Mr. Texas as a child and gave him a trophy and everything, so it is perhaps unsurprising that she was protective. Although calling her by his ex-girlfriends’ names and speaking in broken Spanish is clearly too far.

Fortunately, Alves shared that the two women eventually found their way to a closer relationship after a trip to Istanbul together. The mom of three realized that all her mother-in-law wanted was “for me to fight back,” she explained. “And then from that day on, that night on, we have the most amazing relationship, and I have so much respect for her. She has so much respect for me. I mean, it can get tricky sometimes, you know? But we always end with a good laugh and a joke.”

Which is a good thing considering McConaughey and Alves have been married since 2012 and are raising 15-year-old son Levi, 13-year-old daughter Vida, and 10-year-old son Livingston together. Grandchildren she was happy to quarantine with in Texas in 2020, she told Red Table Talk at the time. “I'm enjoying so much being around my grandchildren. I'm very comfortable with them,” McCabe said. “Matthew is a very good son. I tell him that all the time. He's good to me.”

And while they got off to a tough start, Alves credits McConaughey’s mom with passing down some of her husband’s best traits. “She’s very organized, very minimalistic, very on time, very prepared,” she said on the same podcast interview, “and he gets a lot of those traits from her.”