In honor of Thanksgiving, Camila Alves McConaughey is showing love for her mother-in-law.
As you probably know, Camila has been married to Matthew McConaughey for 11 years after first meeting in an LA nightclub back in 2006.
Today, the couple share three children, sons Levi, 15, and Livingston, 10, and a 13-year-old daughter named Vida.
Both Camila and Matthew use their social media platforms to share insight into their family life, with Matthew’s mother, Mary Kathlene McConaughey, often making appearances.
And this holiday season was no different as Camila took to Instagram with her mother-in-law to spread a message of kindness and gratitude.
“In the midst of everything you're doing today, whatever it is that you're doing, take a break and take a moment to really think in your life what you're grateful for and how you can help others,” Camila said in a sweet video alongside Matthew’s mom, who’s affectionately known as MaMac or Kay.
When asked what she’s grateful for, Kay — who’s 91 — said she’s most fortunate for her and her family’s good health.
“Well, number one, I'm grateful that I have [my] sons and their spouses and my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren and they’re all healthy,” she said. “That's the main thing — they're all healthy, and I'm very healthy.”
She continued: “And when you have good health, nine out of ten times you're happy. So there you go, put it together. Happy and healthy, you can't beat it.”
Camila uploaded the video to Instagram over the weekend, shining a spotlight on her mother-in-law in a text caption.
“MaMac’s Thanksgiving gratitude!” she wrote, adding: “She's 91, and I am blessed and grateful to have her in my life.”
And while Kay and Camila are quite the duo today, their relationship wasn’t always so harmonious.
During a podcast appearance this summer, Camila revealed that she and Matthew’s mom didn’t see eye to eye when she and Matthew first started dating.
“She did all these things when I first came in the picture, right? And she was really testing me. I mean, really testing me,” recalled Camila, who is Brazilian. “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.”
Eventually, Camila decided it might be a good idea for her and Kay to spend some one-on-one time together to strengthen their relationship, so she invited her on a work trip to Istanbul.
However, the trip didn’t entirely go to plan as things between the pair only became more complicated after Kay told Camila “all these stories and putting all these things in [her] head,” leading her to lose her cool.
“So I just flip it on her and brought my spicy Brazilian, Latin side, and I let her have it,” she remembered of the heated encounter. “So I went back at her, and we had it back and forth, back and forth. And then at the end, she just looked at me, and she was like, ‘OK. Now you’re in.’”
From this point onwards, Camila said that things changed drastically in their relationship, having earned her mother-in-law’s respect.
“All she wanted was for me to fight back,” Camila said, “and from that day on, that night on, we have the most amazing relationship.”
So, while Camila told this story in a lighthearted way, the revelation that Kay would call her by the wrong name and speak to her in broken Spanish was met with intense backlash, with people describing her behavior as “toxic” and “mean-spirited.”
Since then, Matthew has weighed in on the criticism more than once, clarifying that Camila “wasn’t wounded” by his mom’s actions.
“My family — and part of Camila and I as well — we cherish the value of a sense of humor and comedy,” he said during an appearance on the Whine Down with Jana Kramer podcast last month. “She tested my feelings and tested the woman I had the feelings for. Big picture, that’s pretty cool, actually.”
Prior to this, he said that “testing” newcomers is a rite of passage in the McConaughey household, and that nobody gets accepted into their family “easily.”
“Oh, my family, we humbly wait, we make you cry, and then we pick you up and make your favorite drink. ‘You’re welcome back.’ So there are initiations, rites of passage that my family’s always enjoyed,” he told ET Canada in September.
“We test you. And even in our own family with my brothers and mother is one of us,” he added.
