What to Know
Alix Earle is going into the new year with some tough challenges in her personal life. Just weeks after a very public breakup with former Miami Dolphins player Braxton Berrios and being linked to Tom Brady, the 25-year-old revealed a serious issue: Her mother has breast cancer.
The New Jersey native’s parents, Thomas “TJ” Earle and Alisa Maniaci, first met at Lynn University in Boca Raton in the mid-1990s, and divorced in 2013. The exes, who are still based in the Garden State, also share another daughter, Ashtin Earle, 22.
In an Instagram and TikTok video on Sunday, Alix Earle is seen bundled up in a down coat visiting her mom in a hospital apparently up north.
“F— cancer,” reads the text over a screen while a female narrator says in a voiceover: “Strong women never give up. We might need a coffee, we might need a good cry, we might need a day in bed, but we will always come back stronger.”
The clip was captioned, “Go momma! So proud and inspired by you no challenge you can’t face … I love you.”
Though the timeline of her mother’s illness wasn’t shared, Earle told someone in the comments that the diagnosis came halfway through her recent stint on “Dancing with the Stars.” The University of Miami grad came in second place to mirrorball trophy winner Robert Irwin in Los Angeles last November.
“She still showed up every week,” wrote Earle, whose tribe has a somewhat complicated backstory.
The mega influencer also has three half-siblings from her father’s second marriage to Ashley Dupré, a former call girl who shot to fame for her role in the Eliot Spitzer prostitution scandal, which led to his resignation as governor of New York in 2008.
These days, the blended family is quite close, and Dupré also was seen rooting for her stepdaughter from her own TikTok perch.
In one of her “Hot Mess” podcasts in 2024, Earle addressed the relationship with her 40-year-old stepmom, whom she sees as more like a “sister.”
Though admitting the transition after her father, a construction honcho, left her mother, a philanthropist, was tough, all is well now.
“I don’t want people to think that our parents got divorced and we were like, ‘Hey, we’re a big perfect family,’ ” said Earle. “Because it was like years and years of us fighting and hashing it out to get to this point that we’re at, and I’m very grateful that we’re here.”
Madeleine Marr; Miami Herald; (TNS) | ©2026 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
