Heather Rae El Moussa Reveals the One ‘Really Hard’ Thing Christina Haack Did That Made Her Feel Welcome as a Stepmom
Whatever feud Heather Rae El Moussa and Christina Haack may have had in the past is firmly in the past. The two women (one the wife of Tarek El Moussa and the other the ex-wife) are friendly, supportive co-stars now on HGTV’s The Flip Off. Heather Rae, who shares son Tristan, 2, with Tarek, opened up about the “really hard” thing Haack did to make her feel like a welcome stepmom to Haack and Tarek’s kids Taylor, 14, and Brayden, 9.
Heather Rae, who married Tarek in 2021, said on Melissa Gorga’s On Display podcast, per PEOPLE, that “it took two years” for her and Haack to get to a good place. This might have never happened if Haack hadn’t made a selfless first move: she “never micromanaged” Heather Rae when it came to the kids.
“That was really nice that I wasn’t told what to do, how to do it. I was able to just kind of come in and figure things out on my own and kind of at my own time,” the Selling Sunset star explained. “And she was very much in their life.”
“So it wasn’t like I was coming in to replace her. I was just coming in to be added love and help take care of them and help raise them,” Heather Rae said.
Since welcoming her baby boy, Heather Rae has a greater appreciation for how difficult that must have been for Haack in the early days. “And you know, I give her props because being now a mom and having my son, it would be really hard to have a woman come in and raise my kid and not know what they’re doing at the household,” she said. Heather Rae added, “But I think Christina knew early on that my heart was just pure. I was there to love and I was there just to be a really good stepmom. And I think she felt that and knew that and the kids loved me so much that she was grateful for me.”
It’s nice to see these two women coming together for the kids and figuring out how to forge a friendship in their blended family. They are on the same page, so now Heather Rae can focus on getting there with her husband.
In a recent interview on the Scrubbing in With Becca Tinney & Tanya Rad podcast, Heather Rae admitted that her and Tarek don’t agree on family planning. “[Tristan] is, like, the light of my life. It makes me so happy,” she said. “I’m like, ‘How could I not want more?’ But my husband is very much done.”
Awkward! Because of the difficulty of that disagreement, Heather Rae and Tarek are “talking through things” in couple’s therapy. “I wish we would have started it sooner because I think it’s such an amazing thing and it helps communication,” she admitted.
Props to all three of them for working on their communication skills and forging closer relationships. It’s not easy, but it’s so worth it!
These celebrity exes are getting co-parenting right.