Tina Knowles isn’t holding anything back in her new memoir “Matriarch: A Memoir.” The book, which was included in Oprah’s Book Club, details “grief and tragedy, creative and romantic risks and turmoil, the nurturing of superstar offspring and of her own special gifts,” in addition to what led to her divorce from Mathew Knowles after 31 years.
For the first time, Knowles opened up about her marriage to Mathew after they tied the knot in 1980. The 71-year-old admitted: “There were already problems in our marriage that first year. But the suspicions I had would get washed away by the fact that our love was stronger than a misstep...It was us against the world, taking on what life brought us.”
“The marriage was deteriorating faster than I could possibly find ways or even reasons to make it work — even with the pregnancy,” the mother of Beyoncé confessed when referencing her pregnancy with Solange. She admitted how Mathew, a Houston-based salesman who went on to manage Destiny’s Child, was often unfaithful, but she “had gotten used to these extremes — incredibly joyous half the time as we shared life’s adventure, then being disgusted and heartsick over how brazen his cheating could get.”
Knowles detailed how she was “was caught in this dance with him, each doing the same steps over and over: He would cheat or act up, and I would say I’d had enough. He would beg for forgiveness, crying and promising to get better... But this is what married people did, I told myself.” Despite his pattern with infidelity, the final straw came in 2009 when she learned — via the media — that Mathew had fathered a baby outside of their marriage.
“I screamed, ‘Get out! Get out!’ like he was some demon. ‘I hate you!’ ... my world had exploded,” Knowles wrote when he tried to converse with her later that day. Two years later, Knowles filed for divorce, and they didn’t speak for three months. “I was deeply sad, not about him but about the marriage,” she wrote. “I felt like I failed. I failed us, my kids — myself.”
“This was different from the other times I had chosen to leave him,” Knowles wrote. “Now I had no choice. In the aftermath of that explosion, I kept pace with my life, as I had now for years, sticking to my routine and allowing work to numb and carry me.”
She found love again with actor Richard Lawson in 2015, but their marriage ended in 2023. Mathew married former model Gena Avery in 2013.
“My journey has been filled with so many obstacles, so many hardships, but it’s also been filled with tremendous amounts of joy... It’s been an amazing ride,” Knowles said in an interview. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.”