In an exclusive interview, style icon Maye Musk talks about having been in a troubled marriage, achieving success later in life and her new memoir
Meet Maye Musk: style icon, pioneering 72-year-old model and beauty brand CoverGirl’s oldest-ever spokesperson. In an exclusive interview, Elon’s mother tells us about her troubled marriage, being a single mom and her new memoir, A Woman Makes A Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success.
‘ When you get to your 60s, you become very wise,’ says Maye Musk, with a laugh. The mother of Kimbal, Tosca and Elon (you know the one – the billionaire co-founder of Tesla and SpaceX) has lived an anything-but-ordinary life and, at 72, she’s an international style and beauty icon. Earlier this year, she immortalised a lifetime of experiences in her memoir, A Woman Makes A Plan .In it, she shares moments from her life and what we can all learn from them – whether it involves business, health, beauty or overcoming hardship.
Although she’s been modelling since she was 15, it was only at the age of 68 that Maye’s career really took off: she appeared in Beyoncé’s music video for ‘Haunted’, was signed to IMG models (the same agency that represents Gisele Bündchen) and, at 69, became the oldest-ever spokesperson for cosmetics brand CoverGirl.
That makes her sound like a late bloomer – she’s anything but. Maye opened a practice as a registered dietician at just 22, and became the first dietician to appear on a cereal box in the ’90s. (When her first book on nutrition, fitness and confidence, Feel Fantastic, was published in 1996, Special K used it as part of their women’s Self-Esteem campaign.)
Maye and her twin sister, Kaye, were born in 1948 in Canada, but her family – mom Wyn, dad Joshua, oldest brother Scott, Kaye and oldest sister Lynne – moved to Pretoria soon afterwards. (Maye also has a half-brother, Jerry, who she met when she was 16.) Some of her best memories are of her childhood. Her parents took them on amazing adventures, she says, like searching the Kalahari Desert for the Lost City. ‘My parents travelled the world in a canvas plane. They were the first people to fly from SA to Australia in a single-engine canvas plane. There was no GPS and they didn’t have a radio. All they had was a compass and a map.’
By her 20s, Maye thought she knew everything, and that the world was her oyster. ‘I was Vaal Queen and Miss LM Radio – I thought that my life would be fabulous. I had many reality checks coming my way.’
In 1970, Maye married Errol Musk and had three children in the space of three years: Elon first, followed by Kimbal, then Tosca. But by this time, her husband had become abusive. ‘It wasn’t easy to write about,’ she says. ‘At one point I wanted those chapters removed, but my editors were adamant.’ Even her two brothers and her twin had no idea what she’d been through until they read the book. ‘When it was happening, Errol wouldn’t allow me to see them, and when I was able to, I still didn’t say anything.’ At the time, she believed that as a wife you had a duty to your husband, and there was the fear that if she did tell someone, she’d be beaten even more. ‘I know we need to speak about these things, so I hope this book encourages other women to talk to their friends and family, and to get out of bad situations sooner than I did.’
It took a change in the divorce laws that allowed for ‘irretrievable breakdown of marriage’ that finally gave Maye the opportunity to leave Errol – after what she describes as ‘nine years of hell’. She took her
kids to Durban, where she thought she could get away from it all. ‘On the first night I asked them what they’d like to eat and they all said peanut butter sandwiches,’ she writes. ‘That’s when I knew we’d make it – because I was broke, but I could make them that.’
It wasn’t easy, though. Errol did everything to make her life difficult, from refusing to pay for the children’s schooling and medical costs to having her mother-in-law convince her friends, neighbours and the children’s teachers that Maye was abusing and neglecting them so they could sue for custody. Nothing came of it.
The stress of it all saw Maye gain nearly 30kg, putting her out of the running for most traditional modelling jobs. Thankfully, it ended up working in her favour: she was hired by the top modelling agency in Joburg, G3, to become one of SA’s first plus-size models. She’d eventually lose the weight, but at the time it was a godsend.
It was only when they moved to Canada more than a decade later that Maye felt secure. But there was a new worry – the fear of poverty. ‘I had to take care of these kids and I had nothing. But I could make a mean bean soup, and plenty of peanut butter sandwiches!’ She remembers it as a happy time, and her children flourished.
She’s most often asked about Elon, but she talks about all of her kids with pride. Tosca is a big name in the film industry, and has created a streaming platform called Passionflix, which adapts romance novels – ‘the female leads get the same pay as the male leads, and [there are] female directors’
– while Kimbal is a restaurateur and philanthropist. ‘He opens farm-to-table restaurants to support local farmers,’ says Maye.
She believes that growing up with a working single mom is what made her kids so entrepreneurial. ‘I ran my own practice from home, but I also did talks, consulting work, wrote articles – even [wrote] a book – and modelled, all so I could keep a roof over their heads and food on the table.’
Her kids had to be independent, just as her parents had raised her and her siblings to be. ‘All three of my children did their own thing, chose their own studies and career paths.’ Although she admits that Elon could have done with more stimulation. ‘When Elon was about 10, he said he wanted to live with his dad – all because his father had the Encyclopedia Britannica, which I couldn’t afford. He also had a computer, which was rare at the time.’ (Today, Elon and his father are estranged.)
Her children were the first to hear about
A Woman Makes a Plan, and they couldn’t be happier for her. ‘They saw me struggling through the years; they’ve also seen how I’ve thrived over the past four years.’ Although her then-husband
stopped beating her when Elon was five, the Tesla CEO still remembers it. And while Kimbal and Tosca don’t, they do recall how harshly their father treated their mom.
Maye says she would never have dreamt that one day she would be travelling the world and strutting the runways in New York and Milan. ‘It would have just been silly. All I could do then was keep going.’ Which is what A Woman Makes a Plan is about. ‘There are times when it’s going to feel like your life is falling apart,’ she says. ‘You just need to keep climbing out of that deep hole until you get out of it.’
When she moved to New York at 50, she told Kimbal that one day her face would be smiling down from a billboard in Times Square. ‘We both laughed,’ she says. ‘Well, I’ve had four so far.’
Despite having lived in three countries and nine cities, her heart will always belong to Pretoria, now Tshwane. ‘I grew up in a happy home with a father and brothers who treated women as equals. I hadn’t yet seen the harshness of the world.’ But, with most of her grandchildren now living nearby, she won’t be leaving LA anytime soon. She has 11 grandchildren; the oldest is 17 and the youngest, seven. ‘They’re quite independent and they’re a delight to be around.’
Although she’s lived in North America for three decades (first in Canada, then the US), Maye still has an SA accent and can still speak Afrikaans. She picked it up when she did her masters at the University of Pretoria – it was an entirely Afrikaans programme – and when she did her residency in Bloemfontein, where she had to lecture and chat to the media, all in Afrikaans.
Considering it was only when she left South Africa that she felt safe again, it’s surprising to hear that Maye misses home – especially the people and the sense of humour. ‘People here don’t get my humour at all – you can’t be sarcastic because everyone takes you so literally.’ Case in point: during a red carpet appearance, she was wearing a designer gown. ‘Someone commented on how fabulous I looked, and I jokingly said, “Oh, this old thing.”’ They took her seriously, telling her she needed to work on her self-esteem…
She recently came back from Fashion Week in Milan and New York, which she shared with her 299 000 followers on Instagram with the hashtag #Itsgreattobe71. It still amazes her that she’s living a life in which the likes of Dolce & Gabbana want to dress her. ‘I know I’m doing extremely well at 72, but I know I’m going to be doing even better at 82 and even 92.’ As long as she stays healthy and doesn’t text while crossing the road, she adds.
The response to her memoir in Canada and the US has blown her away, and she’s sure it will do well in SA too. ‘Nobody has had an easy life, and everybody has a story – which is why it resonates with so many people.’