Maye Musk: The flamboyant mother of the richest man on earth

Perhaps being the mother of Elon Musk should be the last thing that Maye Musk, born Halderman, should be known for. But fate sure had other ideas. However, Maye Musk is not your everyday celebrity mum. She is a force of nature in her own merit. A dietician and model for five decades, this 76-year-old mother of three enterprising children has fought ageism in fashion and made grey hair a trend in the fashion world. Along the way, she has to her credit many bold campaigns, including a nude cover for Time magazine at the age of 62 and another one (with a fake belly to promote pregnancy in advanced age) in New York magazine in 2011.

Maye also has the distinction of being the oldest to appear on the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated at 74. The only plus-size model in South Africa in the 1970s, she is a double master's degree holder in dietetics and nutritional science.

Born in 1948 in Saskatchewan, Canada to maverick but enterprising parents, Maye Halderman’s life was anything but ordinary. The Halderman family moved to South Africa in the early 1950s and Maye grew up and lived a significant part of her life in the favourable environs of apartheid South Africa. The family flew around the world in a propeller plane in the 1950s and one of the things she mentions in her autobiography is this adventurous spirit. Her father Dr Joshua Norman Halderman was also an amateur archaeologist. The family’s other obsession was the search for the Lost City of Kalahari. They spend over 10 years in this pursuit.

She was fond of fashion and her mother told her to do pattern cutting of dresses, Maye said in an interview. She started modelling when she was 15 and at the age of 21, she was a finalist in the Miss South Africa beauty pageant, in 1969.

“When I was 15, my mum’s best friend had a modelling school and she gave me a free modelling course and I started being booked for jobs. When I was 20, my friend entered me for a beauty competition and I became a finalist for Miss South Africa. I was doing my B.S. in Dietetics,” she said in an interview with The Cut in 2016.

In 1970, Maye Halderman married Errol Graham Musk, a South African engineer.

Life with an abusive husband

They had three children in three years- Elon, Kimbal and Tosca.  However, the marriage was far from ideal. In her autobiography, A Woman Makes a Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success, Maye describes Errol as a violent man and an abusive husband. There was even an incident in which she was forced to seek refuge in a friend’s house and Errol turned up with a knife, in pursuit of her.

Maye moved to Durban from Pretoria, with her children, to be away from her husband. At the age of 31, she was suddenly a single mum with three children to take care of. They were divorced in 1979. She started a dietician practice from home and a part-time modelling job.

Struggle with weight, money and custody fight

She had another struggle in the pipeline. After years of being a careful eater, she started eating everything and gained as much as 40 pounds, in no time. She hit plus-size at the age of 32 years and became a popular model for that. However, it was very hard for a dietitian to accept being a plus-size model. She decided to reverse it, ate perfectly and dropped 40 pounds to get back to size 6 in a year.

During this phase, money was just enough to make ends meet, but family life was peaceful again, she notes in her memoir. “We’d buy second-hand clothes. We couldn’t afford to go out and eat. I fed them peanut butter sandwiches. My kids loved it! They didn’t know they were deprived,” she said.

Maye's troubles didn’t end easily. There was a fierce battle for the custody of the children. “He (Errol) had different things to sue me about every year. Within one week after every trial, I’d receive a subpoena for the next one. It just never stopped,” Maye was quoted in an interview.

Two years after their divorce, Elon decided to move in with his father - because he had a set of Encyclopedia Britannica and a computer, luxuries Maye couldn't provide. Soon Kimbal followed his brother. Maye moved from Durban to Bloemfontein for her hospital internship and then to Johannesburg to be near her family.

A working mum taking care of her children

Things took a definitive turn when Elon finished graduate school and decided to pursue his degree in Canada, the birthplace of his mother.    Maye followed Elon to Canada with her daughter Tosca and by 1989 all her children were back in Canada.  She was 41.

In 1996, at the age of 48, she moved to San Francisco as her children had graduated and wanted her to come to the USA. Two years later she moved to Manhattan and continued her practice and modeling career then at the age of 64, she moved to Los Angeles to help her daughter Tosca with her newborn twins. She is currently based in New York from where she travels all around the globe as a model, dietician and speaker.

Later bloomer and covergirl

Her modelling and career as a diet guru flourished all these years in Canada and the US. Maye stopped colouring her hair in her late 50s and it turned out to be a wonderful move for her career as a model. Her campaigns included magazine covers, billboards in Times Square and advertising campaigns for US and other international companies, including Revlon and Special K cereal. She was also featured in the Beyoncé video, Haunted. Her controversial nudes happened in 2010 (Time Health) and 2011 (New York magazine). In 2015, Maye was signed by American modeling giant IMG at age 67. She became the oldest spokesmodel for CoverGirl in 2017, at age 69. She also became the oldest swimsuit model for Sports Illustrated at 74, appearing in their annual issue in 2022.

Chinese market, Chinese minds

Since 2023, she making forays into the Chinese market for speaking engagements and modelling jobs. She has starred in ads and commercials promoting consumer electronics firm Oppo's popular Find X6 Pro smartphone and has partnered with handbag brand Oleada, Bloomberg has reported.

She is the global ambassador of Chinese mattress brand AISE Baobao. Earlier in 2024, she walked the runway for local apparel brand JNBY in Hangzhou.

Her popularity in China took off in 2020, when her memoir was published in Chinese and became especially popular with female readers. Many Chinese see her as a symbol of strong parenting and wisdom, and her bond with her son adds a tech-savviness to her image, many say.

However, with Elon Musk’s direct competition with Chinese EVs and his close association with president-elect Donald Trump who in turn is wowing to impose more tariffs on Chinese goods, it is interesting to see the inroads she is making in the country where most US giants fell flat.

Maye Musk's journey is a testament to the power of resilience and embracing the unique path. From her early days as a model to her later success as a dietician and global spokesperson, she has defied expectations. It is a tale of personal triumph, independence, and the pursuit of self-reinvention. It is also a reminder that her legacy is not just her family’s accomplishments. As she summed up in an interview, she was famous before Elon became famous.