At 25, Mikayla Matthews told her followers she was “genuinely just barely surviving.” By April 2026, she had packed up her life in Utah, loaded four kids into the car, and moved to Hawaii — not for a vacation, not for a content opportunity, but to try to get her body to stop attacking itself.
That’s the version of Mikayla most people don’t find in a 60-second TikTok. She has 3.8 million followers on @mikaylamatthews and has been a principal cast member on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on Hulu since Season 1. She’s 26 years old, born March 17, 2000, and has four children under the age of nine. She’s also currently separated from her husband of eight years, navigating a rare chronic illness, and doing all of it publicly while an entire comment section watches.
The searches around her name reflect just how much ground her story covers: her illness, her kids, her marriage, her split. Here’s what actually happened.
Growing Up in California — and Starting Over in Utah
Mikayla was born in the United States and grew up in Granada Hills, California, a suburban neighborhood in the northwest San Fernando Valley. She’s the second youngest of what she’s described as a large family — six or seven siblings in total — though she hasn’t publicly named any of them.
When her parents divorced, she and her siblings moved to Utah with their mother. That relocation planted her squarely inside LDS culture, and it’s the backdrop against which most of her early adult life unfolded. She has since identified as ex-Mormon in online discussions, distancing herself from active LDS affiliation — a detail that quietly adds another layer to her presence on a show called Secret Lives of Mormon Wives.
Her parents’ identities have never been disclosed publicly. What she has shared is that the household was turbulent, and that her childhood carried weight she’d spend years trying to process. The specifics of that came out gradually, and not all at once.
Pregnant at 16: The Story She Eventually Told in Full
When Mikayla was 16, she met Jace Terry. He was 21 at the time — a five-year age gap that she has since reflected on with considerably more complexity than she might have at the time. Within about a month of knowing him, she was pregnant.
She didn’t figure it out the way most teenagers do. She fainted in a sauna, and her mother took her to the hospital. A blood test confirmed the pregnancy. She left high school and finished her education online, eventually completing her degree that way. For a period, she lived with her sister while carrying Beckham, her firstborn son, who arrived in 2017.
She’s described the pregnancy as emotionally devastating — not just because of the circumstances, but because she had been a victim of childhood sexual abuse beginning at age six. That trauma, she has said in interviews including on YouTube’s The Squeeze, shaped how she experienced intimacy and relationships throughout her entire marriage. It is, in her own words, a wound that never fully closed.
She and Jace married in 2018, when she was 18. The relationship had already been going for two years by then, bound together by a child and a shared life neither of them had planned.
MomTok, Secret Lives, and the Platform She Built
Mikayla didn’t set out to become a content creator in any formal sense. She became part of MomTok — the TikTok community of young Utah-area mothers that exploded in visibility around 2021 and 2022 — alongside names like Taylor Frankie Paul, Mayci Neeley, and Whitney Leavitt. The collective’s candid takes on motherhood, marriage, and Mormon culture turned each of them into household names in the influencer space.
Her TikTok account, @mikaylamatthews, now sits at 3.8 million followers and 376.9 million likes. Her content spans mom life, skin condition transparency, relationship updates, and the kind of unfiltered personal storytelling that has made her one of the more emotionally raw voices in the MomTok ecosystem. She posts consistently across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube — her @mikayla__matt Instagram has 1.7 million followers, and her YouTube channel carries 276,000 subscribers across 696 videos.
Her brand deals have not been small. E! News has reported that she earns between $20,000 and $75,000 per partnership deal, with an estimated $6,000 per sponsored post. Her Amazon storefront (@mikayla__matt) bills her as a “leading content creator” with strong engagement, and in June 2026 she announced a partnership with snack brand Snackish, which included a trip to Germany.
The bigger platform catalyst, though, was Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Mikayla has been part of the cast since Season 1, when the Hulu reality series turned MomTok’s internal dynamics into a fully produced television event. She returned for Seasons 2, 3, and 4, cementing herself as one of the show’s central recurring voices rather than a peripheral cast member.
Four Kids, One Marriage, and a Separation No One Saw Coming
By the time Mikayla and Jace separated in March 2026, they had been together for nearly a decade and had four children together.
Beckham (son, born 2017) is the oldest, now eight. Haven (daughter, born 2019) is six. Tommie (daughter, born 2021) is four. And Lottie (daughter, born October 2024) was barely five months old when Mikayla publicly announced that the marriage was ending.
The reason she has given is specific, not vague. The childhood sexual abuse she experienced starting at age six fundamentally affected her ability to be intimate in the way a marriage requires. Years of couples therapy didn’t resolve it. She has said, in her own accounting, that she and Jace both reached a point where she needed to focus entirely on her own healing — and that remaining in the marriage as it was would prevent that.
The separation is not yet a finalized divorce. Mikayla has not publicly announced new romantic involvement. On Reddit’s r/MormonWivesHulu and related communities, the response has been largely sympathetic — readers parsing the timeline, expressing support for her, and acknowledging how rare it is for someone with her platform to talk about childhood sexual abuse in this kind of detail.
She’s also been candid about where the cast drama lands in relation to everything else she’s managing. During a reunion segment that involved Demi Engemann discussing an assault, Mikayla said she felt “triggered.” She’s also publicly clashed with Whitney Leavitt, calling her “a little delulu” and saying she lacks accountability — with Taylor Frankie Paul backing her up. For someone described as one of the quieter MomTok voices in early seasons, Mikayla has become considerably more willing to say exactly what she thinks.
CIRS, Mold, Breast Implants, and a Move to Hawaii
The health story didn’t start with a diagnosis. It started with a surgery.
In March 2023, Mikayla got breast implants. Within months, her skin — which had already dealt with chronic eczema since childhood — began reacting in ways she couldn’t explain. Painful hives. Unexplained rashes. Flare-ups that made her feel like her body was at war with itself. She had the implants removed in January 2024, about ten months after getting them, hoping that would reset things.
It didn’t.
In September 2024, she posted for the first time about what she was experiencing, describing it as “fighting for my life.” By March 2026, she had a diagnosis: Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS), a condition triggered by prolonged mold exposure. The implants, she believes, were the entry point.
CIRS is not a widely understood condition. It involves a dysregulated immune response to biotoxins — often mold, though other triggers exist — that produces a wide range of symptoms affecting the skin, brain, and multiple organ systems. It’s not well-represented in standard medical curricula, which is part of why it often takes years to diagnose.
Her move to Hawaii in April 2026 was specifically a treatment decision. Utah’s climate was triggering immediate flare-ups. Hawaii’s environment — humidity, air quality, lifestyle factors — reportedly improved her symptoms enough to make the move feel necessary rather than optional. She reported the update to E! News, framing it as a medical relocation rather than a lifestyle upgrade.
She has clapped back at followers who minimized the condition as “just rashes,” particularly in May 2026. The comment section reaction to her CIRS posts has been largely supportive, with fans expressing understanding that a chronic inflammatory illness is not something you can simply push through.
What Mikayla Matthews Is Worth — and How She Earns It
Multiple sources, including PrimeTimer and The Tab, estimate Mikayla’s net worth at $5 million. For a 26-year-old who left high school at 16 with an unplanned pregnancy, that number tells a story about the scale of the platform she built.
Her income comes from several directions at once. TikTok’s Creator Fund pays based on views and engagement, and at 3.8 million followers her earnings there are meaningful. Instagram is more lucrative on a per-post basis: her reported $6,000 per sponsored post figure, combined with deals ranging from $20,000 to $75,000, puts her annual brand income well into the six-figure range at minimum. Her Amazon storefront generates affiliate commission. Her YouTube channel, with nearly 700 videos, earns ad revenue on a consistent basis. And her role on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives comes with a reality TV paycheck that has not been publicly disclosed but is understood to be a real income stream for principal cast members.
She is, by any measure, financially independent from her marriage — a fact that has undoubtedly factored into her ability to separate, relocate across the country, and prioritize her health without a visible financial crisis to navigate alongside everything else.
Mikayla Matthews in 2026: Where Things Stand
As of June 2026, Mikayla is living in Hawaii with her four children, separated from Jace Terry, managing her CIRS treatment, and continuing to post content across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. She is partnered with Snackish and has teased a trip to Germany as part of that deal.
She is not the same person who showed up in the early MomTok era. That version was quieter, more contained. The Mikayla of 2026 is someone who names her abuser’s impact on her marriage in plain language, who claps back at cast members on TikTok comments, who tells her audience she’s “barely surviving” and means it literally.
What she’s doing — building an audience through radical transparency about things most people won’t say out loud — is not a new influencer strategy. But the specificity she’s bringing to it is unusual. There are plenty of mom creators on TikTok. There aren’t many talking about childhood sexual abuse, chronic inflammatory illness, and the end of a marriage they started at 16 while simultaneously promoting a snack brand and planning a European trip with their four kids.
Whether Season 4 of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives gives her the space to tell more of that story remains to be seen. She has, at minimum, given no indication that she plans to stop.
Frequently Asked Questions
What chronic illness does Mikayla Matthews have?
Mikayla Matthews has Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome (CIRS), a condition triggered by prolonged mold exposure. She believes her CIRS was set off by breast implants she received in March 2023. After having them removed in January 2024, her symptoms persisted, and she was formally diagnosed by March 2026. The illness involves a dysregulated immune response that has caused chronic skin flare-ups, hives, and other symptoms since.
Why did Mikayla Matthews leave her husband?
Mikayla and Jace Terry separated in March 2026 after eight years of marriage. She has been open about the reason: childhood sexual abuse she experienced from age six caused lasting effects on her ability to be intimate, and years of couples therapy didn’t resolve the issue. She has said she needed to focus on her own healing, which wasn’t possible inside the marriage as it was. The split is a separation, not a finalized divorce.
Who did Mikayla Matthews have her first baby with?
Mikayla had her first child, son Beckham (born 2017), with Jace Terry. She was 16 and Jace was 21 when she became pregnant. The pregnancy was discovered when she fainted in a sauna and a hospital blood test confirmed she was expecting. She and Jace married in 2018 when she was 18.
How many kids does Mikayla Matthews have?
Mikayla Matthews has four children, all with Jace Terry. They are Beckham (son, born 2017), Haven (daughter, born 2019), Tommie (daughter, born 2021), and Lottie (daughter, born October 2024). Her Instagram bio describes her as “Mom to three girls and one boy.”
Is Mikayla Matthews still on Secret Lives of Mormon Wives?
Yes. Mikayla has been a principal cast member since Season 1 of Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on Hulu and has appeared through Season 4. She is one of the original MomTok cast members to remain with the show across all four seasons.
Where does Mikayla Matthews live now?
Mikayla relocated from Utah to Hawaii in April 2026. The move was medically motivated — Hawaii’s climate significantly improved her CIRS symptoms, while Utah’s environment was triggering immediate flare-ups. She announced the move publicly through E! News and has continued posting content from Hawaii since the relocation.