Camila Alves and Matthew McConaughey have certainly proved their love and commitment to each other in the nearly twenty years that they have been together.
However, after they first met and started dating in 2006, there was someone very important in the actor's life that needed a lot more convincing than usual: his mom, Mary Kathlene McCabe, who the McConaughey family affectionately call Ma Mac.
Aside from the Oscar-winner's own previously rocky relationship with his mom – the two didn't speak for roughly eight years during his rise to fame – his wife also didn't get off on the right foot with her, though Camila recently revealed how they were able to finally get along.
Speaking with Sid Evans for a new episode of Southern Living's Biscuits & Jam podcast, the model and mom-of-three detailed what exactly was the turning point for Ma Mac to accept her as the woman her son would eventually marry and have kids with.
"She did all these things when I first came in the picture, right?" she recalled, adding: "She was really testing me. I mean, really testing me. She would call me by all of Matthew's ex-girlfriends' names, she would start speaking Spanish with me in a very broken way, kind of putting [me] down a bit. I mean, all kinds of stuff."
She went on to tell the story of how she landed a modeling job in Istanbul, which came with an extra first class ticket and free stay at a nice hotel, so she told her now mother-in-law: "Ma Mac, you're gonna come with me."
© GettyCamila continued: "The whole way there, the whole plane ride to Istanbul, she was telling me all these stories and putting all these things in my head."
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It wasn't long before she decided: "Enough [of] that, when we landed, I was like, 'Okay, all right. Let me buckle up. Let me get ready for this situation.'"
© GettyThe Brazilian native then revealed: "About day three, I was taking her to her room, and she got into this whole other thing that it's not my place to share, and she starts crying, and I'm like, 'Oh my gosh!' You know, 'Ma Mac!' and feeling so sorry. And as I put her to bed, I look at her and I'm like, 'Oh my gosh. She's full of [expletive].'"
© GettyIt was all Camila needed to stand up for herself, and she said: "So I just [flipped] it on her and brought my spicy Brazilian, Latin side, and I let her have it. So I went back at her, and we had it back and forth, back and forth," before revealing the happy outcome: "She just looked at me and she was like, 'Okay. Now you're in.'"
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© Getty"All she wanted was for me to fight back," she admitted, before noting: "From that day on, that night on, we have the most amazing relationship, and I have so much respect for her."
"She has so much respect for me," she added, and though she confessed "it can get tricky sometimes," she maintained: "We always end with a good laugh and a joke."
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