Don’t Say Her Name, Say Her Name: Beyoncé’s Father Mathew Knowles Abruptly Ends Interview After Tina Knowles Mention
Matthew Knowles was visibly offended by the idea that both he and Tina Knowles helped get their children to where they are today.
Source: Jim Smeal / Getty
The father of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles walked out of an interview early after his ex-wife was brought up. The interviewer, PIX 11 anchor Kendis Gibson, mentioned Tina’s name in relation to the work both she and Mathew did with Destiny’s Child. “What work did she put in?” asked the former manager of Destiny’s Child.
When Gibson referenced the work that both Tina and Mathew–who were married for more than 30 years–put into the girl group, Knowles interjected, “What work did she put in?”
Kendis, clearly caught off guard by Matthew’s response, answered by mentioning how Tina used to style the group’s hair and design their costumes in the early days of their career.
Once those aspects were mentioned, Mathew agreed that Kendis was “absolutely right” about Tina’s involvement in the group–which consists of Beyoncé, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams–via their “styling” and “imaging.” However, quickly after agreeing, Matthew got up from his chair and said, “We’ll stop now.”
Kendis laughed at the uncomfortable situation before asking, “Sorry, did I say something wrong?”
“No, no, no,” Mathew insisted, shaking the reporter’s hand. “We’re good.”
After the interview aired, Mathew told Page Six that there were multiple questions about Tina “when the interview was supposed to be about” an upcoming Destiny’s Child tribute concert. He also claimed Gibson arrived to the sit-down 15 minutes late, saying, “How it starts is how it ends. It started on a bad note, and obviously ended on a bad note for him.”
“I politely ended the interview, shook his hand, and took a photograph,” he told the outlet.
It’s certainly not surprising that Matthew’s previous marriage seems to be a sore spot. Over the years, Tina has been open about her rollercoaster relationship with the record exec, which ended in 2009 after she discovered he’d fathered a child outside of their marriage. While they briefly rekindled their romance after that, they broke up for good in 2011.
Tina details their on-again, off-again romance in her 2025 memoir Matriarch, writing about how she and Mathew “were so good half the time” that it made it difficult to leave.
“He would cheat or act up, and I would say I’d had enough,” she wrote. “He’d beg for forgiveness, crying and promising to get better.” And though he would get better, “the same thing would happen again. But this is what married people did, I told myself.”
She mentioned that Mathew was a “wonderful father,” but also noted that “He had issues that did not make for a good husband then.”
Now that more than a decade has passed since the end of their relationship, Tina says there are no hard feelings.
“We are on good terms because we did a good job,” Tina told Gayle King on an April 2025 episode of her SIRIUSXM Gayle King in the House podcast. “We did some really good stuff.”
She continued, “What I’ve said over and over is that yes, I had some really tumultuous, terrible times with Matthew, but I never questioned whether he loved me or my kids.”
