Exclusive: Elon Musk's Mom Maye Musk Shares Rare Insight Into Bond With His Kids
Maye Musk is the center of a very full galaxy.
Ahead of Mother’s Day May 10, the model opened up about raising kids Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk, and Tosca Musk, as well as being a grandmother to their combined 19 children.
“There is no greater joy in my life than being a mother—and now a grandmother,” Maye—whose memoir Timeless will hit shelves Sept. 16—exclusively told E! News. “I treasure every moment I get with my children and grandchildren, but I’ve learned that love grows best without pressure.”
Which is why the 78-year-old—who shares her children with ex Errol Musk—prefers to give her kids the space to make their own mark in the world.
“I’m always here for them, ready with advice, support or a listening ear,” she said. “But I never demand their time.”
And that’s a philosophy she learned from her late mom Wyn Haldeman, who died in 2012 at the age of 98.
“She never guilted me into visiting or feeling obligated, yet I loved being around her,” she continued. “At her 90th birthday, she was surrounded by all five of her children and generations of family who adored her. She didn’t need one designated Mother’s Day. For her, every day was Mother’s Day.”
Which is exactly how Maye feels. And is why she doesn’t need the red carpet rolled out when she’s visiting Elon, a dad of 14 kids with four women.
“I could sleep in a hotel 45 minutes away, or in his garage,” she told E! last October of a visit to SpaceX headquarters, formerly in California. “Everybody says, ‘Oh, was it fabulous?’ I said, ‘No, there were boxes. It's a garage. There were boxes.’”
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Nevertheless, it was what the grandma preferred.
“I would rather sleep on a single bed rather than at a hotel 45 minutes away,” she reasoned. “There's no point in visiting then.”
As she put it, “I'd rather see my kids and grandkids than be in comfort.”
For a thorough dive into Elon’s family tree, keep reading…
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Maye Musk (Mom)
Maye was born in Saskatchewan, Canada and emigrated with her parents to Pretoria, South Africa in 1950, when she was 7. She and Elon's father, Errol Musk, split in 1979.
After Elon moved to Canada at age 17, Maye obtained Canadian citizenship by birthright. There, she established a dietician practice and became President of the Consulting Dieticians of Canada. She also worked as a model.
In 2019, after Elon sold his company Zip2 for more than $300 million, he bought his mom an apartment in New York City, where she lived for 13 years and continued her modeling career after being signed to the IMG Models agency.
"I brought my children up like my parents brought us up when we were young: to be independent, kind, honest, considerate and polite," Maye wrote in an essay for CNBC. "I taught them the importance of working hard and doing good things."
Denver Post Photo by Cyrus McCrimmon/Getty Images
Errol Musk (Dad)
Elon's father is an engineer and like Elon, was born in South Africa.
Though Errol said in a 2015 Forbes interview that he often took his kids on trips overseas—"Their mother and I split up when they were quite young and the kids stayed with me. I took them all over the world."—his relationship with Elon isn't picture perfect.
In an emotional 2017 Rolling Stone interview, Elon criticized his father and talked about his upbringing, saying that after his parents split, he moved in with his dad, which, he said, "was not a good idea."
However, Errol told Rolling Stone, "I love my children and would readily do whatever for them."
Following his divorce from Maye, Errol married Heide, whose daughter Jana Bezuidenhout was 4 years old at the time. Errol and Heide went on to have two daughters together before they, too, broke up.
Years later, Jana reached out to Errol following a breakup of her own. "We were lonely, lost people," Errol explained in a 2018 interview with The Sunday Times. "One thing led to another—you can call it God's plan or nature's plan."
Either way, the duo became romantic and welcomed son Elliott in 2017 and then a baby girl in 2019. As Errol put it to The Sun, "The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce. If I could have another child I would. I can't see any reason not to."
Kimbal Musk & Tosca Musk (Siblings)
Kimbal, born in 1972, is a restauranteur and the founder of The Kitchen, a collective of five restaurants that source directly from local farmers. He also runs a non-profit, Big-Green, that has built 200 learning gardens in schools across the U.S., the outlet said.
Tosca, born in 1974, is a filmmaker. In 2017, she founded Passionflix, a female-focused streaming service that targets the billion-dollar romance novel industry.
Twitter / Justine Musk
Justine Wilson (Ex-Wife)
Elon and Justine, his college sweetheart from Queen's University in Ontario, married in 2000. In a 2010 article she penned for Marie Claire, titled I Was a Starter Wife: Inside America's Messiest Divorce, Justine said that while dancing at their wedding reception, Elon told her, "I am the alpha in this marriage."
In the moment, "I shrugged it off," Justine wrote, "just as I would later shrug off signing the postnuptial agreement, but as time went on, I learned that he was serious."
The two faced an unthinkable tragedy when their baby boy Nevada Alexander died at 10 weeks in 2002 from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). "Nevada went down for a nap, placed on his back as always," Justine wrote in her article, "and stopped breathing."
The couple pursued IVF to conceive again and went on to welcome five more kids: Twins Vivian and Griffin and triplets Kai, Saxon and Damian.
In 2008, Elon filed for divorce.
Twitter / Elon Musk
Griffin, Kai, Damian & Saxon Musk (Sons)
In 2022, Elon revealed he took Griffin and the triplets to meet Pope Francis. While he was honored to meet the head of the Catholic church, Elon added of his 'fit, "My suit is tragic."
Instagram / Vivian Jenna Wilson
Vivian Jenna Wilson (Daughter)
Also in 2022, Griffin's twin sister filed a petition to change her full name in accordance with her new gender identity, writing, "I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form."
In July 2024, Elon spoke out about his daughter's transition. "I lost my son, essentially," he said in a Daily Wire interview with Jordan Peterson, adding that his child, who he referred to by her birth name, was "dead, killed by the woke mind virus."
He also alleged that he was "tricked" into signing medical documents granting Vivian gender-affirming treatments.
She disputed his comments. "He was not by any means tricked," Vivian said in an NBC News. "He knew the full side effects."
In a 2025 Teen Vogue interview, Vivian revealed that she relocated from L.A. to Japan and hasn't spoken to her father since 2020. "He's a pathetic man-child," she surmised. "Why should I be scared of this man? Because he's rich? I don't give a f--k how much money anyone has."
Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
Talulah Riley (Ex-Wife)
Elon and Talulah—who starred on HBO's Westworld—married in 2010. "It all happened very fast," she told CBS News in 2014. "We were engaged after, I think, two weeks of knowing each other."
The two divorced in 2012, then remarried a year later before divorcing again in 2016. In June 2024, Talulah wed Love Actually alum Thomas Brodie-Sangster.
Amber Heard (Ex-Girlfriend)
Elon and Amber went public with their romance in early 2017, a year after she filed for divorce from Johnny Depp and Elon ended his (second) marriage to Talulah. Though their relationship didn't last long.
"I just broke up with my girlfriend," Elon told Rolling Stone in a November 2017 interview. "I was really in love, and it hurt bad...Well, she broke up with me more than I broke up with her, I think."
ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images
Grimes (Ex-Girlfriend)
Elon and the singer dated on-and-off for four years, starting in 2018. In September 2021, Elon told Page Six that he and Grimes "are, I'd say, probably semi-separated," adding, "It's mostly that my work at SpaceX and Tesla requires me to be primarily in Texas or traveling overseas and her work is primarily in LA. She's staying with me now and Baby X is in the adjacent room."
However, in March 2022, she told Vanity Fair that they "live in separate houses" and are "best friends."
She later tweeted, "Me and E have broken up *again* since the writing of this article haha, but he's my best friend and the love of my life, and my life and art are forever dedicated to The Mission now."
When news broke in September 2023 that the couple actually had three children together, the "Crystal Ball" singer confirmed that, yes, their most recent addition Techno Mechanicus had joined son X Æ A-12 and daughter Exa Dark Sideræl.
In November 2024, Grimes revealed that she had "spent a year locked in battle in a state with terrible mothers rights having my instagram posts and modeling used as reasons I shouldn't have my kids," all the while, "fighting and detaching from the love of my life as he becomes unrecognizable to me."
Fighting with just a "fraction" of his resources, she was kept from one of her kids for five months, she continued, adding, "This is only what can be said publicly, since most of my experience these last years should remain behind closed doors."
Theo Wargo/Getty Images for TIME
X Æ A-Xii Musk (Son)
In 2020, Elon and Grimes welcomed their first child together, a son. They soon modified the spelling of his name in order to meet California's legal guidelines, which only permit letters from the English alphabet. Switching over to roman numerals, the parents agreed to spell his name, X Æ A-Xii.
"X, the unknown variable," Grimes explained on social media. "Æ, my elven spelling of Ai (love &/or Artificial intelligence) A-12 = precursor to SR-17 (our favorite aircraft). No weapons, no defenses, just speed. Great in battle, but non-violent."
Grimes continued, "A=Archangel, my favorite song" adding a rat and sword emoji. "Metal rat."
Dia Dipasupil/WireImage
Exa Dark Sideræl Musk & Techno Mechanicus Musk (Kids)
In her 2022 Vanity Fair interview, Grimes revealed she and Elon privately welcomed a baby girl via surrogacy.
"Exa is a reference to the supercomputing term exaFLOPS (the ability to perform 1 quintillion floating-point operations per second)," she said. "Dark, meanwhile, is the unknown. People fear it but truly it's the absence of photons. Dark matter is the beautiful mystery of our universe.'"
Sideræl—pronounced "sigh-deer-ee-el"—is, according to mom, "the true time of the universe, star time, deep space time, not our relative earth time," and a nod to her favorite Lord of the Rings character, Galadriel, who "chooses to abdicate the ring."
Walter Isaacson revealed in his biography Elon Musk that Exa was born in December 2021 via surrogate.
The book also stated that around Father's Day 2022, the on-again, off-again couple welcomed a child named Techno Mechanicus, nicknamed Tau, also via surrogate. The biography includes a photo, dated June 2022, of Elon feeding the baby boy.
Though Grimes would prefer other salient details be kept private. "I have tried begging the public and my kids dad to keep them offline, and I've tried legal recourse," she shared on social media in 2025. "The state of my children's lives being public is of grave concern to me and I think about how to solve this every day. It's insane to me that theres no way to deal with this."
X / Shivon Zilis
Strider Sekhar Sirius & Azure Astra Alice (Kids)
In 2022, Business Insider published court documents that stated Elon welcomed twins with Neuralink executive Shivon Zilis in November 2021. The babies were born in Austin, Texas, where he lives.
He also seemingly weighed in on the report on X, writing, "Doing my best to help the underpopulation crisis. A collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far."
"Mark my words," he added, "they are sadly true."
In the 2023 biography Elon Musk, it was revealed that the twins' full names are Strider Sekhar Sirius and Azure Astra Alice. Elon later shared that Strider's moniker was inspired by the nickname of Lord of the Rings character Aragorn and late physcist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar. Meanwhile, Azure was named after a spell from the video game Elden Ring.
Twitter/Getty Images
Arcadia (Kid)
On Feb. 28, 2024, Elon and Shivon welcomed their third baby together. The billionaire confirmed the news in June 2024, telling Page Six, "All our friends and family know," adding, "Failure to issue a press release, which would be bizarre, does not mean 'secret.'"
One year later, Shivon tweeted, "Happy 1st birthday, darling Arcadia. Mommy loves you with all her heart."
Ashley St. Clair/X; Kevin Lamarque - Pool/Getty Images
Ashley St. Clair (Alleged Mother of His Child)
Roses are red, violets are blue and on Valentine's Day 2025, conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair had a little sharing to do.
“Five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world. Elon Musk is the father,” the Elephants Are Not Birds author wrote on X Feb. 14 of her son Romulus, in honor of Rome’s legendary first king and founder. “I have not previously disclosed this to protect our child's privacy and safety, but in recent days it has become clear that the tabloid media intends to do so, regardless of the harm it will cause.”
“I intend to allow our child to grow in a normal and safe environment,” she continued. “For that reason, I ask that the media honor our child's privacy, and refrain from invasive reporting.”
Weeks after her rep called on Elon to “publicly acknowledge his parental role with Ashley,” she accused him of cutting his child support payments for the baby, prompting him to address the matter on social media.
“I don’t know if the child is mine or not, but am not against finding out,” he wrote in a post on X March 31, adding, “Despite not knowing for sure, I have given Ashley $2.5M and am sending her $500k/year.”
She'd actually had a chance to pocket even more, an April Wall Street Journal article alleging that Elon's staffer Jared Birchall offered Ashley $15 million and $100,000 a month in child support in exchange for her silence about her baby.
However, Ashley said she told him, “I don’t want my son to feel like he’s a secret.”
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Seldon Lycurgus (Son)
Elon and Shivon announced on Feb. 28, 2025, that they had welcomed their fourth child, a baby boy named Seldon Lycurgus. They were inspired to share the news while marking their third child's first trip around the sun.
"Discussed with Elon and, in light of beautiful Arcadia’s birthday, we felt it was better to also just share directly about our wonderful and incredible son Seldon Lycurgus," she wrote on X. "Built like a juggernaut, with a solid heart of gold. Love him so much."
Elon responded with a heart emoji.
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