# Maye Musk

Maye Musk (née Haldeman; born April 19, 1948) is a Canadian model and dietitian. She has been a model for 50 years, appearing on the covers of magazines, including a Time magazine health edition, Women's Day, international editions of Vogue, and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. She is the mother of Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk and Tosca Musk. She holds Canadian, South African, and American citizenship. She is a registered dietitian and earned two masters degrees in diet and nutrition.

## Early life and career

Maye Haldeman was born on April 19, 1948, in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, a twin and one of five children. Her family moved to Pretoria, South Africa, in 1950. Her parents, Winnifred Josephine "Wyn" (Fletcher) and Joshua Norman Haldeman, a former director of Technocracy Incorporated, a former Regina chiropractor and amateur archaeologist, were adventurous and flew the family around the world in a prop plane in 1952. She has an older brother Scott who was born around 1942 in Canada, a twin sister Kaye, who is the mother of Russ Rive, who co-founded both SuperViz in 2018 and the Brazillian interactive media design company SuperUber in 2002, and the co-founders of SolarCity Lyndon and Peter Rive, and a younger brother Angkor Lee who was born in 1955. For over 10 years, the family spent time roaming the Kalahari Desert in search of its fabled Lost City of the Kalahari. Their parents gave slide shows and talks about their journeys. "My parents were very famous, but they were never snobs," she said. Joshua Haldeman was a political activist who ran for the Canadian Parliament for the Social Credit Party of Canada, and headed the Canadian branch of the Technocracy movement.
As her parents were entrepreneurs, Musk started working at about 8 years of age, when she would "prepare her parents monthly bulletins and photocopy newsletters, and then put the stamps on the envelopes.” By the age of 12, before and then after school, Musk worked as a receptionist alongside her twin sister for their father.
As a young woman, Haldeman was a finalist in the 1969 Miss South Africa beauty competition. In 1970, she married Errol Musk, a South African engineer she met in high school. They had three children: Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk, and Tosca Musk. She named Elon after her American grandfather, John Elon Haldeman (born in Illinois).
In 1979, she divorced Errol Musk. Two years later, Elon, who was about 10 at the time, decided to live with his father, as he had the Encyclopaedia Britannica and a computer, things which Maye could not afford to give the children as a single parent. Kimbal joined Elon four years later. After graduating from high school, Elon decided to move to Canada; in 1989, six months later, Maye moved to Canada with her daughter Tosca.
Maye earned a master's degree in dietetics from the University of the Orange Free State in South Africa. Her major was taught in Afrikaans, one of the four languages Musk now speaks. She later earned another master's degree in nutritional science from the University of Toronto. In 2023, she was given an honorary degree, a doctorate of dietetics, from the same university where she earned her masters.

## Later life

Her modelling career continued in Canada and the United States. She has appeared on boxes of Special K cereal, in Revlon ads, and in a Beyoncé video ("Haunted"). She appeared nude on both the cover of Time magazine for a health issue and the cover of New York magazine in 2011, the latter with a fake pregnant belly. She was on the cover of Elle Canada in 2012, and starred in advertisement campaigns for Target and Virgin America. In September 2017, she became CoverGirl's oldest spokesmodel at age 69, which one news story reported as "making history". In 2022, at age 74, she was the oldest Sports Illustrated swimsuit model to date, appearing on the cover of the annual issue.
In addition to modelling, she has a business as a dietitian and gives presentations worldwide.
She wrote a memoir titled A Woman Makes a Plan: Advice for a Lifetime of Adventure, Beauty, and Success (2019). Maye had written ‘Feel Fantastic- Maye Musk’s Good Health Clinic’ which was published in 1996. It enumerated healthy habits and lifestyle changes for healthy aging.
In an interview with Forbes magazine, Musk said her greatest achievement was "having three great kids and surviving".
In 2021, she was one of the guests at Lady Kitty Spencer's wedding.
Maye Musk appeared alongside her son Elon on Saturday Night Live on May 8, 2021, the day before Mother's Day.
In April 2023, Musk received an honorary doctorate from the University of the Free State in South Africa for her work as a dietitian.
Since at least 2023, Maye Musk has developed a large following in China, where she has "star status" and is seen as a role model. She is on billboards, magazine covers, speaking events, and she represents at least five major Chinese brands in advertising. Her image "carries an element of successful parenting, attracting a significant number of mothers among her followers". Concerns have been raised in the US that she is so close to President Trump, through her son Elon, that she may be a security risk. The F.B.I. normally scrutinizes the foreign contacts of presidential advisers and their family members before granting security clearances, but no such clearances are known to exist for Maye. There is no evidence that she has sought to influence U.S. government policy, according to a New York Times article from March 2025.

## Politics

When Musk became an American citizen, she registered as Democrat. However after unnamed Democrats allegedly said that her son "Elon is terrible", she thought the party was "malicious and dishonest", and changed to Republican. In October 2024, Musk made a post on X recommending Republican voters should commit fraud during the 2024 United States presidential election, by voting under false names multiple times, purporting that Democrats were already doing so using "illegals". She gave no evidence that "illegals" are voting. Musk was cautioned by lawyers that her post constituted a criminal act, and that she could be legally prosecuted for criminal conspiracy, if anyone followed her recommendation. She then said readers should "ignore" the post.