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As Selena Gomez’s star rose, so did her family’s. Gomez has always attributed her success to the support and inspiration of her mother in particular, Mandy Teefey.
“When I started working, my mom was the person in my life that helped guide me through most of that,” Gomez told Time Firsts. “Everything that I am has kind of become a little bit of what my mom has gone through. She had the ability to make me feel like I was still capable of doing anything I wanted.”
Gomez has also talked about the influence of her biological father Rick Gomez and stepfather Brian Teefey. Here’s what we know about the whole family.
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Who is Mandy Teefey?
Gomez’s parents, Mandy and Rick, started dating when they were teenagers going to school in Grand Prairie, Texas. When Mandy was 16 years old, she realized she was pregnant, and the couple welcomed their daughter on July 22, 1992.
“I was a teen mom with Selena, obviously, and was very judged by that, even by my counselors and my teachers [who said] that I failed and just let go of it,” Mandy told Entertainment Tonight in an interview in March 2017. “My neighborhood was a really rough neighborhood [with] gangs. With all of that stuff, and when I got pregnant, I think that’s what triggered, because I was like, ‘OK, I have another person depending on me. I gotta get straight,’ and that’s when I started hammering through. I’m like, ‘I’m not going to let her have the upbringing I did.’”
Gomez has talked about how her mom worked multiple jobs to support her and that she encouraged her to pursue acting. Performing was an interest of Mandy’s as well. She even appeared in commercials, music videos, and live shows. In March 2017, the mom told the New York Times that she brought her daughter to a rehearsal and saw Gomez catch the acting bug.
“She went to one of my rehearsals with me and sat through the whole thing, not moving,” said Mandy. “On the way home, she was quiet, and then she goes, ‘You know, Mom, that might be funnier if you did it this way.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, no. She’s going to be an actor.’”
Mandy began dating Brian when Gomez was a teenager, and they were married in 2006.
Who is Brian Teefey?
After their marriage, Brian began managing Gomez’s career with Mandy. In 2014, Gomez decided she needed a different management team. Mandy told TMZ at the time that she respected her daughter’s decision. Gomez went on to sign a record deal with Interscope and shut down her sustainable Kmart clothing line, Dream Out Loud.
In 2015, she told ELLE that she made all these decisions because she “wanted to be a little uncomfortable” in her career.
“That’s why I made all of these decisions within a year. I wanted to be my own person. I wanted to test myself. I wanted to see if I could really do it,” she said.
In February 2016, she told W magazine, “I was like, ‘Mom, I gotta figure it out on my own.’”
Brian continued his LH7 Management without Gomez. In 2011, his stepdaughter announced that Mandy and Brian were expecting a baby, but Mandy miscarried soon after. The baby was named Scarlett, and Mandy still honors her memory frequently.
Two years later, on June 12, 2013, Mandy gave birth to her daughter Gracie Elliot Teefey. Gracie and Gomez are quite close, and Gomez often includes her little sister in big moments in her life, including parties, events, and walking the red carpet.
Who is Rick Gomez?
Rick does not seem to be very involved in Gomez’s life now, and she previously told Rolling Stone, “He didn’t want to be a part of this industry life, so it was really me and my mom, our journey.”
He does, however, seem to be supportive from afar and posts pictures of them together on his Instagram page.
She has shared memories of her time with him as a kid, telling Harper’s Bazaar he would bring her Hooters to watch San Antonio Spurs games.
“He started noticing that when I would come, with my little pigtails, all the waitresses would be like, ‘Hey!’ So he ended up half spending time with me but with all those cute girls coming over. And that became our thing,” she joked.
Rick got remarried to a woman named Sara Tovar Gomez, with whom he shares two children.
What other projects have Gomez and her family worked on?
Gomez and Mandy teamed up for the very popular Netflix adaptation of 13 Reasons Why. The story follows the friends, family, and even just the acquaintances of high school student Hannah Baker after she dies by suicide. While both of them are very interested in issues around mental health, Gomez told Metro.us that Mandy was the one who came up with the idea to adapt the novel.
“One day [my mom] came home with this novel,” she said. “I was about 16 or 17 when that happened. When I read the book, I saw that I could perfectly relate to the story. And above all, my fans could connect with it.”
Mandy told Yahoo’s BUILD Series that she wanted the show to be a “transition piece” as Gomez moved past her time at the Disney Channel and Wizards of Waverly Place. But Gomez ended up aging out of the role before it could be produced. The actress instead became the show’s executive producer.
In 2022, the mother-daughter pair co-founded the mental health website Wondermind, which has mental fitness content.
“For us, what mental fitness means is working with your mind each day,” Mandy told People. “Well with therapy, if you can’t afford one hour a week, what tools do you need to [help your mind]? So what we’re trying to do is have tools and podcasts and content that can help people understand the way different people’s minds work.”
Mandy has talked about the challenges of supporting her daughter through her mental health struggles in Gomez’s documentary, Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me. She actually discovered that her daughter had checked into a facility for mental health treatment in 2018 through TMZ, as they weren’t speaking during that period.
“They called me and wanted to know what my daughter was doing in the hospital with a nervous breakdown. She didn’t want anything to do with me,” Mandy shared. “I was scared she was going to die. You hang on as tight as you can and try to help them with their treatment, and that’s the hardest thing to do—to then go to bed and hope that they wake up the next day.”
They have since reconciled, and Gomez talks openly about the importance of maintaining her mental and physical health with her fans.