Who Is Mikayla Matthews? What to Know About 'The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives' Star

This story includes references to child abuse and sexual assault. If you, or someone you know, has been a victim of sexual assault or harassment and would like help, visit RAINN.org.

The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and #MomTok star Mikayla Matthews gained a reputation online for her wholesome content and on the Hulu reality show for her sarcastic, deadpan responses. While some of her costars and influencer friends are quick to stir drama, she’s on the quieter side, but still unafraid to tell it like it is.

Mikayla has also stepped into the spotlight more throughout the reality hit’s run. In addition to becoming more comfortable with standing up to the other #MomTok women (ahem, Whitney) and revealing her fourth pregnancy in season 2, she also began to speak more candidly about surviving childhood sexual abuse. In season 3, even more of her personal issues come into the fold. Below, read on to find out everything you need to know about Mikayla on- and offscreen on SLOMW.

Mikayla Matthews is a Utah-based influencer and content creator.

Mikayla, 25, is a content creator with over 3.3 million TikTok followers. Her content explores motherhood and documents her journey with chronic illness. She announced that she and her husband, Jace Terry, were expecting their fourth child in February 2025, and the early days of her pregnancy are shown towards the end of season 2. When we see Mikayla again in season 3, she’s seven to eight months pregnant. Like some of her SLOMW costars, including Jessi Ngatikaura, Mikayla was raised Mormon, but has stated on multiple platforms that she no longer practices.

Mikayla married her husband Jace Terry when she was 17.

Mikayla married her husband Jace in 2018 at 17-years-old. In an episode of "The Squeeze" podcast with Tay Lautner, Mikayla describes how she moved out of her mother’s house to live with her sister at 15. Shortly thereafter, she met Jace through her sister, who worked with Jace’s roommate. Within “less than a month” of meeting Jace, Mikayla found out she was pregnant at 16. Though the two “barely knew each other,” Jace expressed support when Mikayla said she wanted to see the pregnancy through. She gave birth to their first child, a son named Beckham, in July 2017. They married a few months later.

“I think all that was traumatizing, but also it was so helpful being with someone like Jace because, again, he's been so patient with me,” Mikayla shared on "The Squeeze" podcast. “He truly wants me to be the best version of myself.”

The two are also parents to Haven, their daughter born in 2019, and Tommie, their daughter born in 2021. The couple welcomed their fourth child in July.

Mikayla and her husband Jace spend season 3 struggling with intimacy issues in their relationship.

Mikayla reveals in season 2 of SLOMW that she was sexually abused from age 6 to 15 and, within the “last six years,” sex began to trigger her trauma. She explains that she still struggles with the abuse she survived and attends therapy for the first time about midway through season 2.

In season 3, Mikayla explains that she has intimacy issues because of her past, and she and Jace spend the majority of the episodes navigating the impact those struggles have on their relationship. In episode 5, Mikayla attends an Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy session in hopes of starting to unravel her struggles. During the session, she explains more about her difficulty with being vulnerable and how there’s a lot Jace doesn’t know about her abuse. Jace, meanwhile, says in a confessional that he has a hard time developing an emotional and vulnerable relationship with Mikayla, saying it “just leads to me feeling like my wife doesn’t love me.”

Things come to a head when the #MomTok women and their partners go to Stagecoach Music Festival together. At that point, Mikayla had not yet scheduled a couples therapy appointment for her and Jace, despite her EMDR therapist recommending it. So while they’re away, Mikayla and Jace attempt to orchestrate an intimate night for just the two of them in their room’s jacuzzi. After encountering some technical difficulties getting the jacuzzi jets to start and a migration to the hot tub, Mikayla finds her sexual bravado has dissipated, leaving her feeling vulnerable once again and wanting to go to bed.

The next day, Mikayla gets annoyed with Jace for being “cold” towards her and having fun with the rest of the group without her. When Jace tries to talk to her at the festival, she brushes him off, saying she “doesn’t want to talk” to him. Jace tells the camera he wants to be “as supportive” as he needs to be, but that they’ve been “at this for years with her not working on things.” “I’m honestly at the breaking point,” he says. The two fight off-camera in their room later that night about not being on the same page.

“I feel a lot of pressure and guilt around my marriage and our sex life right now. I feel like I have a lot of broken pieces that I haven’t fixed yet,” Mikayla says in the show. “Even though I know that it comes from the abuse and the way I was raised, I think growing up in the church, I’m always trying to chase this idea of being a perfect wife or being perfect for him. It just never feels attainable.”

Jace and Mikayla finally attend couples therapy together in episode 8, “The Book of Awakening.” During the session, Mikayla explains how she oftentimes views sex as an obligation, whereas Jace says he views it as a way to be connected to his wife. Later in the episode, Mikayla tells Jace about the abuse that happened when she was 6 (he had previously only known about the abuse that occurred when she was 15), as well as the identity of her abuser, which is not said on camera. “Although it’s really scary to get all of this off my chest, I feel a lot of relief at the same time,” Mikayla says to the camera. “By no means do I think that it’s going to be a one-and-done fixed deal, but I feel like Jace came into my life at a time that I really needed it.”