Catherine Paiz, known to millions as one half of the popular Youtube channel, the ACE Family, has stepped onto Alex Cooper’s Call Her Daddy podcast to share her unfiltered side of a story that has recently captivated and confused fans. For years, the ACE Family impacted millions with vlogs, challenges, and glimpses into their seemingly perfect lives. However, behind the carefully curated content, rumors and controversies emerged, leaving many questions unanswered.
After Paiz’s publicized divorce from Austin McBroom (the other half of the ACE Family), rumors of infidelity, and the announcement of her memoir Dolores: My Journey Home: (Finding Myself Beyond the ACE Family), Paiz is finally breaking her silence. The exclusive Call Her Daddy interview, released on May 28th, 2025, takes a deep dive into Paiz’s life before the ACE Family, the reasons behind the ACE Family’s dissolution, her side of the cheating story, and where Paiz stands today after navigating a troublesome public and personal life.
Her Campus reached out to McBroom’s team for comment about Paiz’s quotes on Call Her Daddy, but didn’t hear back in time for publication. But of course, McBroom isn’t staying *completely* silent. After Call Her Daddy’s official Instagram page posted a few clips from the interview to promote the episode, on one of these posts, McBroom commented, “Dropping this on my daughter’s birthday is crazy.”
Here’s everything Paiz revealed about her relationship with McBroom and her life beyond the drama.
- Paiz felt silenced for a long time.
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The episode began with Cooper asking Paiz why she felt like talking about everything now. Throughout the controversies, Paiz hadn’t publicly addressed rumors about McBroom’s cheating or rumors about the state of their marriage. “I felt silenced for so long, and it wasn’t like someone was silencing me, I was silencing myself,” she said.
Later on, when asked about McBroom’s less-than-pleased response to her book, Paiz said, “I feel like that’s already an indicator of why I never expressed myself through all those allegations of cheating and infidelity and all those things. I was so afraid to speak up, I was so afraid to say I’m an idiot … I was so afraid to say I’m trying to hold the very little piece that we have in our family. I’m trying to keep them together, I’m trying to shelter the very little piece that we have.”
- Paiz addressed how quickly her relationship with McBroom developed.
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Paiz and McBroom started dating in 2015 and had their first child, Elle, in May of 2016. The next year, in 2017, the pair became engaged and married in 2017. On CHD, Paiz spoke about how she and McBroom first met and later went on a date at a sushi restaurant, during which time she had the realization: “Oh my gosh, that is a person I am going to have children with and that is a person I am going to marry,” she told Cooper. “I knew it at that moment.”
Cooper mentioned how quickly their relationship progressed and asked if she was ever nervous about it. “No,” Paiz said. “Because it was just meant to be … It’s like we just went from meeting each other to being like, ‘We’re married.’”
- The ACE Family Channel was genuine — at first.
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The ACE Family channel was launched in 2016, and their first video was uploaded in July of that year, a few months after the birth of their first child. “It was so pure,” Paiz said of the channel. “We’re just being present with our family, our daughter … [Our audience] just wanted to see us and they see themselves in us.”
After some time, Paiz said she began to feel as if certain moments weren’t genuine anymore. “The moment I realized where I didn’t know if this is real or not real … when my second daughter was born. I just felt this disconnection and it was like, ‘I actually don’t want to film this, but I know people are waiting for this because they’ve invested so much.’” According to Paiz, she felt “numb and empty” at those times.
When asked about what it was like when the cameras were off, Paiz says she didn’t notice much of a difference. “When the cameras were off, I wouldn’t say there was much of a change,” she said. “I feel like I was pretending. I feel like I was so disconnected from myself. All of this happened so fast … so when the cameras were off, it was more like, ‘I’m just going to sit here and breastfeed my baby and just scroll on my phone.’ I never went out, I never hung out with my friends, I hardly saw my family, I was in a really dark place.”
- There were many cheating scandals Paiz was aware of.
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“I don’t remember exactly the first first moment because I feel like there’s just so many,” Paiz said about McBroom’s cheating. In one instance, she recalled a time when their daughter was getting their first haircut and she had taken Austin’s phone to take a photo of the moment, since her phone had died. “As soon as I grabbed the phone, this long text came through … my brain scanned it, but I wasn’t able to read it fully, but in that moment my heart dropped. I’m pregnant, there’s people watching, the camera’s on, it felt just surreal … He grabs the phone and instantly deletes the message and I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s true.’”
Later on in the interview, Cooper asked if McBroom ever apologized about cheating on her. “It never felt apologetic ever … Even through our divorce, even though everything, I never heard him say the words ‘I cheated’ until that first chapter of my book came out.”
- Paiz recognizes her faults in the relationship.
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At the start of the podcast, Paiz talked about her family and her parents, who are divorced, acknowledging her parents’ relationship has an impact on her view on love and relationships. “When my marriage was going downhill, we didn’t have good communication … When I looked at my parents, I thought I didn’t want to be another couple that didn’t make it.”
Cooper mentioned recent comments McBroom had made about Paiz and their relationship, and Paiz revealed there were mistakes she had made, but believes McBroom is trying to hurt her. “I think that’s just his way to just throw jabs, just trying to make me look crazy. It’s kinda sad.”
- Paiz wanted to protect McBroom’s image.
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Catherine spoke about her children throughout the podcast and how she always put them and their well-being before her own. Also, she was thinking about her fans and the millions of people who subscribed and tuned into their YouTube channel. “I didn’t want people to bash him,” Paiz said of McBroom. “As much as he hurt me, as much as I got stabbed in the back, I could handle that … For a long time that was a huge part of why I didn’t want to speak up, because I didn’t want the father of my children to get publicly humiliated, but then over the years I thought ‘Well he already got it. I need to do what is best for me, I can’t keep living in a lie, I can’t not address the big elephant in the room.’”