Whether you kept up with them out of snark or earnestness, there’s a new update on the ACE Family saga. The vloggers, consisting of Austin McBroom, Catherine Paiz, and their three children, have over 18 million followers on YouTube — even if they haven’t regularly posted in two years.
Why the hiatus? Last year, the couple announced that they were getting divorced. Austin wrote on Instagram at the time, “We have mutually agreed to a divorce but will remain a team when it comes to our kids.” Similarly, Catherine posted, “We have mutually agreed to a divorce and will part amicably.”
Two weeks ago, excerpts from Catherine’s upcoming memoir DOLORES: My Journey Home: (Finding Myself Beyond The ACE Family)–BOOK ONE made the rounds online, in which Catherine writes of being cheated on. Austin then confirmed in a video that he did cheat on Catherine, saying, “I 100% stepped out of my marriage, and it was completely wrong for me to do it” — but then claimed that he had done so with her knowledge, provided he didn’t “embarrass” her.
Now, Catherine has just been interviewed on Call Her Daddy, where she goes into the cheating scandal in depth. When asked when she first found out about the infidelity, Catherine claimed that it was while she was pregnant with their third child and he was “in Miami for a meeting.”
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She further noted that she was “exhausted” and didn’t notice anything amiss other than Austin calling her “a little too much” and him “pocket dialing” her while he was talking to some women. A few months later, someone made a YouTube video claiming that Austin had been with a number of women. Though she is unable to watch it to this day, her friends surmised the video, to which she said, “I remember bawling and thinking, ‘Is this true?’ And even if it’s not true, why are people saying this? This is so detailed. I didn’t believe the horrors, but it was like, am I just being stupid right now? Or do I vindicate him? Do I vindicate our family? And that’s what I did.”
“I think back at my old self and think, poor girl, I wish I could hug her today. She was just going through so much. The old version of myself just wanted to protect that little peace we had in the family,” she continued, saying that she had to “focus” on the baby she was having.
She alleged that Austin denied any cheating and claimed that someone was trying to “extort” him through lying. “I was just lying to myself. I knew deep inside something didn’t feel right,” she continued. She then said that a few weeks later, she had to borrow Austin’s phone to film their daughters first haircut, when she saw a message come in that began, “If you really loved your wife, you wouldn’t be…”
Though she said there was “yelling” and “screaming” that day, she wasn’t able to get clarity on who the message had come from until later, when he said it was from “a girl that needed help with Snapchat.” Noting that she was “traditional” and had “stick by your husband” values, she said she chose to forgive him. “It never felt apologetic, ever,” she said. “Even through our divorce, even through everything, I never heard him say the words ‘I cheated’ until about a week ago when that first chapter of my book came out.”
“You could have just been honest with me and just told me, but it was like I was being gaslighted, like it wasn’t actually happening. I think that finally hearing those words was so healing for me because I wasn’t going crazy,” she continued, alleging that she “never ever said” that it would be okay for him to cheat on her: “You never cheat on the person you love and I would, never in a million years say that, so that was really hurtful.” Catherine further said that she knows “for sure” of three women who allegedly had an affair with Austin.
Austin hasn’t responded to the full interview yet, but he did comment on a promo of the episode by writing, “Dropping this on my daughters birthday is crazy.”