Catherine Paiz Reveals Where She Stands With Ex Austin McBroom After Cheating Scandal

The 34-year-old social media star is best known for documenting her life with then-husband McBroom on their massively popular YouTube channel, The ACE Family which cultivated an audience of over 18 million subscribers on the platform.

However, their marriage came to a screeching halt, with Paiz later accused him of infidelity in her memoir, Dolores: My Journey Home. He later admitted to “stepping out of my marriage,” but also insisted “Catherine knew what I was dealing with for a very long time,” claiming he wasn’t getting the “affection” he needed from her.

After turning her memoir into an audiobook with Spotify, Paiz opened up to TooFab exclusively about where she stands with McBroom — over a year since their divorce. Since then, fans of The ACE Family have been quick to notice how Paiz still speaks of McBroom fondly, despite his infidelity throughout their marriage.

“I do that because he’s me,” Paiz began to tell TooFab exclusively.

“Because everyone is actually you, we’re all one and this incarnation, this reality, this matrix that we’re in, this simulation, everyone is a reflection of you and nothing is done to you, everything is done for you,” she continued.

The pair privately wed in 2017, later announcing the news in January 2020 while expecting their third child. They share three children: Elle, 8, Alaïa, 6, and Steel, 4. The pair were together for nearly a decade and married for seven years before announcing their divorce with separate Instagram statements in January 2024.

“I went through a lot of pain, and I went through it in front of millions of people,” she continued. “We were filming every day, we had millions of eyes us and I was trapped in myself, within myself. When I realized that this was an opportunity for me … I have to look within myself. And the moment I started doing that and really healing within myself, I realized, wow, ‘He did this for me. He took one for the team,'” she added.

Paiz goes on to admit that she is now “happier” than she has ever been. As for where she stands with McBroom now, she said, “I love him.”

“I mean, I still look at him in the eye,” she continued. “And that’s one thing I realized too in life is, when you have children with someone, you go in a different direction with that person. You have to learn how to love them in a different way now. I’ve had to learn to love him as a father of my children.”

“If anything, I care for him more now. He doesn’t know this, but I worry about him,” she said. “People always want to pick a side, like, I’m Team This, I’m Team That and it’s like, that’s not the real world. The whole world needs a group hug!”

She referred to McBroom as her “biggest teacher” and said she will “always care” about him no matter what. “I’m just glad that I was able to move past that part of my past and then create something beautiful out of it,” she added.

Since the release of her memoir, McBroom has pushed back at some of her accounts — like saying she “knew what [he] was dealing with” before cheating — Paiz shared she didn’t find that as a surprise.

“That was my first time … sharing my hardships in my marriage,” she recalled. “It was my first time really getting it out there to the world … There were things that I didn’t even share with my family. I didn’t share with my mom, my best friend or my dad … I knew that he would discredit things, of course. I just felt it because I know him.”

Paiz found that the former couple were speaking more prior to the memoir being released however, she has since learned to put boundaries in place for herself.

“We speak pretty often,” she told TooFab exclusively. “I would say we were probably more on talking terms before the book came out.”

“But I have to set boundaries,” she continued. “Because one thing about me is I’m very open and I always want everyone to be happy. I always put everyone first. And for me, it was putting my kids first always so, my ex-husband, he’d come to my house unannounced … and so I’ve really had to learn how to set boundaries.”

Looking ahead, Paiz is enjoying living in the present. She recently confirmed on the Call Her Daddy podcast her ayahuasca use after going on a retreat to Brazil. It’s there she also met her now boyfriend, Igor Ten, who she said makes her feel “safe.”

“I’m just very happy right now,” she said. “He’s an incredible soul, incredible person. He’s patient. He’s nurturing. He’s just very safe. He’s just a very, very safe, honest person, just a really good person.”

“I don’t know what the future holds. But I do know that I’m living in the present and yeah … I’m just really happy,” she added.

McBroom has also moved on with influencer, Alexa Mal, who has been seen in his social media posts.

Watch more of our interview with Paiz below, where she discussed her memoir and why she decided to have fake names as her fans continue guess who is who.

Dolores: My Journey Home is available on Spotify Premium as part of 15 hours of free listening with your existing subscription, or wherever you listen to audiobooks.