Christina Haack and Heather El Moussa’s Awkward First Meeting and How They Became Best Friends

TLDR: Christina Haack and Heather Rae El Moussa first met in 2019 when Tarek El Moussa arrived unannounced at a custody drop-off with his new girlfriend while Christina was seven months pregnant.

Nobody had been introduced.

From that uncomfortable start, the two women built a co-parenting partnership they now describe as a genuine best friendship, proved in a joint YouTube video in May 2026 that went viral.

---

If you were designing the worst possible conditions for a first meeting between an ex-wife and a new girlfriend, the summer of 2019 would be a strong candidate. Christina Haack was seven or eight months pregnant with her third child, Hudson.

Tarek El Moussa sent a text saying he was coming to collect their kids, Taylor and Brayden. What the text did not mention was that Heather Rae El Moussa was coming too.

Heather showed up at Christina’s door wearing a pink dress, nervous and unprepared. Christina, heavily pregnant, answered. Neither woman had been given any real notice.

According to both of them, it was Christina who broke the tension first, asking Heather a series of welcoming questions to ease the visible anxiety on her face.

That instinct, made in an uncomfortable moment in 2019, is the foundation of everything that followed.

The Meeting Nobody Planned For

Both women have spoken candidly about how they felt in that moment. Christina has said publicly she would have preferred an opportunity to present herself differently.

Heather has described being highly intimidated going in, knowing the dynamic between a new partner and an ex-wife could go in any direction.

That it did not go badly is largely credited to Christina’s choice to make Heather comfortable rather than use the situation as leverage. The two women spent the next several years building something the entertainment industry’s standard narrative about exes and new partners almost never predicts: a genuine friendship.

How Co-Parenting Became a Real Friendship

The practical architecture of their blended family gave both women plenty of opportunities to either build or destroy the relationship. Taylor and Brayden El Moussa move between both households.

Tarek and Heather have their own son Tristan, born January 31, 2023. Christina’s son Hudson, from her marriage to Ant Anstead, is part of her household during custodial periods.

Youth soccer games, school events, and birthday parties repeatedly put Christina and Heather in the same room. Rather than treating those occasions as obligations to survive, both women chose to treat them as opportunities to build something.

They began publicly celebrating family milestones together, maintaining open communication, and supporting each other through major personal transitions, including Heather’s pregnancy and Christina’s subsequent divorces from Ant Anstead and later Joshua Hall.

Taylor El Moussa, now 15, was the first family member Heather told about her pregnancy before it was announced to anyone else.

A teenage stepdaughter being trusted before the news went wider says something specific about how close this extended family actually became.

The May 2026 Video That Made It Official

On May 14, 2026, Heather published a “Get Ready With Me” video on her YouTube channel featuring both women sitting side by side, applying makeup and talking candidly about their early impressions of each other. The video went viral almost immediately.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Heather Rae El Moussa (@theheatherraeelmoussa)

It delivered something the entertainment media’s standard narrative about exes and new wives almost never does: two women being genuinely warm and funny about a situation that could easily have been a disaster. Fans who expected manufactured drama got something more interesting instead.

They discussed the first meeting, the early awkwardness, and how the relationship evolved. The self-deprecating honesty on both sides is what landed.

The Flip Off and What It Looks Like on Television

The Flip Off on HGTV is the professional extension of this dynamic. The show pits Tarek and Heather as a team against Christina in a real estate competition, buying, renovating, and flipping properties in Los Angeles for maximum return. Season 1 drew HGTV’s highest freshman ratings for adults since 2022.

Part of the appeal was the contrast: a high-stakes competition undercut by footage of the same three people showing up to Brayden’s soccer games together.

Season 1 originally had Christina competing alongside her then-husband Joshua Hall. When the couple separated in July 2024 and filed for divorce, Hall was cut from the production entirely. Christina competed solo. The divorce became part of the show’s Season 1 narrative.

Season 2 was ordered in August 2025, with Christina requesting the rematch. Tarek has joked publicly that his primary concern is his ex-wife and current wife forming an alliance against him on camera. Given how the relationship has developed, that is not an entirely unreasonable fear.

For more on Christina’s current personal life, including her relationship with boyfriend Chris LaRocca and her champagne business, the full Chris LaRocca profile has the details.