Roxanne 
Steven McBee Jr. is pushing back on the narrative surrounding his Thanksgiving trip to meet Allie Eklund’s family, saying the visit actually went well, and a text message from Allie after the trip appears to support his version of events.
During an exclusive interview with the Roxanne and Shantel podcast, we asked Steven about the family visit after Allie previously described the trip in a way that made it sound like things had gone poorly.
“What happened when you went to Allie’s family home around Thanksgiving? Because from the way she described things, it went horrible,” we asked.
Steven immediately disagreed.
“It didn’t go horrible,” Steven said, explaining that Allie comes from a very close family and there were roughly 40 to 50 relatives staying together for the holiday.
“Getting to spend a lot of intimate time with her parents or, you know, just her immediate family, it was impossible because there was 40 or 50 people there,” Steven explained. “Her dad was hosting them all at the ranch. So it was just hard to have a lot of one-on-one time with her dad or her mom. But it didn’t go bad at all, for sure.”
When we questioned where the perception that the visit hadn’t gone well came from, Steven said he wasn’t sure.
“I really don’t know because it went well,” he said. “Her family and I were super close. Again, I still think the world of her family. To this day, I do.”
Steven admitted that he may have gone into the trip with expectations that were simply too high. At the time, he believed Allie could ultimately become his wife and hoped he might leave Thanksgiving with her family’s blessing to eventually propose.
“I guess I thought I went into it maybe a little arrogant, thinking, ‘Oh, they’re going to love me. You know, by the end of the week, it’ll be, you know, they’ll be like, yeah, this is our new son-in-law,’” Steven recalled.
But Steven maintains that not receiving an immediate blessing and the actual family visit going badly were two very different things.
“As far as like how that week went, it went fine,” Steven said. “For the amount of time I got to spend with her immediate family, it went just fine.”
And there appears to be a receipt from Allie herself backing up at least part of Steven’s recollection.
In a text message sent after the family visit, Allie told Steven about a conversation she had with her mother.
“I will tell you the one thing that stuck with me was when I was driving home and my mom called me this morning,” Allie wrote. “She said and I quote, ‘We could go out and search the world for your perfect person and we would not find anyone better than Steven for you.’”
Allie then added, “I was like damn mom,” followed by, “So hopefully you agree.”
Another message in the exchange simply reads: “They loved him.”
The text adds new context to the Thanksgiving storyline, particularly because Steven’s relationship with Allie’s family became part of the larger conversation surrounding whether their relationship was moving too quickly.
Steven also explained why, despite everything that has happened between him and Allie since their split, he still speaks highly of her family.
Later in the interview, while discussing his unsuccessful attempt to speak with Allie after their Stagecoach fallout, Steven reiterated that he continued to have “a lot of love” for her family and wanted to handle their breakup with respect.
Even looking back now, Steven says he doesn’t regret prioritizing the Thanksgiving trip because of what he believed their future looked like at the time.
“If I was back in that same time place with the information that I had, thinking what I was thinking about Allie and where our relationship was going to end up, I don’t regret that decision,” Steven said. “At some point, you know, my wife has to come first. And at the time I thought that was my wife.”
