Teen Mom OG star Mackenzie McKee has opened up about her plans for future children, amid the tragic passing of her mom. The 25-year-old spoke to HollywoodLife exclusively ahead of the April 28 episode of the show. “I would have five kids [if I could],” the mom-of-one said. “I would love to adopt from another country, or take in a kid who really needs a home. I’m praying for an opportunity like that.” Mackenzie’s comments come just four months after her mom AngieDouthit passed away at the age of 50 following a lengthy battle with cancer. “I’m surviving. But I’m kind of glad that the show doesn’t air live because I got some time to gather myself.”
But as hard as it was to experience Angie’s passing on camera, Mackenzie believes her mom’s death will help viewers who “are going through this, will go through or have gone through this and they needed this.” She explained, “Since the day [my mom] got sick, I thought mom mom was going to survive. I just did. She was Superwoman and she did just the unimaginable. And I just thought, there’s no way she’d die. The world needs her. She’s powerful. Doctors gave her three months and then she made it to a year. I thought that’s what her story on the show was going to be — she’d survive. I never went [to the worst case scenario] in my mind. So when it did happen, I then realized how hard it was to share my story. My life fell apart after I said yes to returning to the show, but it’s been a humbling experience because people are relating to it.”
The Miami-born mom to Gannon, 8, made sure she helped her mom pay off her house. “The first thing she said when she got sick was ‘I’m not scared to die. I know where I’m going’. But then she got scared. She’d say, ‘I’m so scared to leave your dad in debt,’” Mackenzie told us. “[My parents] never had a lot of money. We were happy, but they didn’t have a lot of money. So she was so scared. With her first MTV check, she paid her truck off. And with anything after, she was just paying off debt. And then, two weeks before Christmas, she told us that doctors said she won’t make it to Christmas. ‘But I need to pay off dad’s house. Something needs to happen,’ she said. So I wanted to help.” Against her dad’s wishes, Mackenzie asked her fans to donate what they could. And almost immediately, fans started sending in “thousands” of donations. “Fifty cents, even! [And small donations kept pouring in.],” Mackenzie said. “[My mom] touched that many lives that it added up to enough money to pay the house off. When we told her, you could see all the stress leave her face. She was able to go peacefully. That was her only worry, other than leaving my dad. I was numb. I couldn’t feel my body. It was so emotional.”
As for her future, and what’s to come later this season, Mackenzie told us that it won’t be “a bed of roses because the grieving process is strange and sometimes very hard. I’m sharing my story, and… it gets rough.” New episodes of Teen Mom OG air Tuesdays at 8pm on MTV.
