Elon Musk's parents: Errol and Maye Musk, the figures behind the Tesla CEO's success

• Elon Musk's parents are Errol Musk, an engineer, and Maye Musk, a model and dietitian.
• Elon and Errol Musk appear to have a strained relationship, based on comments in the press.
• Errol Musk has made the news for fathering children with his former stepdaughter, Jana Bezuidenhout.

Elon Musk is seemingly constantly in the news — but his parents have also made headlines. Elon Musk's parents are Maye Musk and Errol Musk.

Maye Musk is a professional dietitian and model who has made the cover of Time magazine. Last year, at the age of 74, she was on the cover of Sport Illustrated's swimsuit edition.

Maye and Musk's father, an engineer named Errol Musk, were married for nearly a decade before they divorced. Maye said in her book that she'd wanted to end the marriage earlier, but the Divorce Act, which legalized the termination of a marriage in South Africa, was not enacted until 1979. The couple was divorced the same year the law was passed.

After their parents divorced, 9-year-old Musk and his younger brother Kimbal decided to live with their father.

It wasn't until after the move was made that Elon Musk's relationship with his dad, notoriously troubled, began to emerge. "It was not a good idea," Musk said of the move in an interview with Rolling Stone.

Errol Musk made headlines in 2018 when it was revealed that he had a child with his then-30-year-old former stepdaughter, Jana Bezuidenhout, whom he's known since she was four years old.

Bezuidenhout is 42 years younger than Errol and is the daughter of his ex-wife Heide. Errol and Heide were married for 18 years and have two daughters of their own together. In 2022, the elder Musk revealed that he'd had a second child with Bezuidenhout. 

The Tesla CEO told Rolling Stone in 2017 that his father is "a terrible human being."

"You have no idea about how bad," Musk said. "Almost every crime you can possibly think of, he has done."

Last year, Errol responded to a question of whether he was proud of his son in an appearance on the Australian radio show, "The Kyle and Jackie O Show."

"No," he answered. "Well, you know, we are a family that have been doing a lot of things for a long time. It's not as though we suddenly started doing something."

He later said he'd misheard the question.

In a 2018 interview with Business Insider, Errol Musk spoke about the Musk family's wealth.

"We were very wealthy," Errol said. "We had so much money at times we couldn't even close our safe."

Some of the wealth came from the half share in a Zambian emerald mine that Errol owned.

Once, in New York, Elon and his brother Kimbal sold two emeralds from the mine while Errol was asleep, Errol said.

"They just walked into Tiffany's and said, 'Do you want to buy some emeralds?'" Errol said. "And they sold two emeralds, one was for $800, and I think the other one was for $1,200."

Elon would have been about 16 at the time, according to Errol.

A few days later, the family returned to the store to find that Tiffany's was selling the $800 emerald, now set in a ring, for $24,000. It was a markup 30 times the price Elon had received for the gem, and Errol has used the story as an object lesson in how retail works ever since. 

Business Insider contacted Elon Musk to confirm his father's story, but he did not respond. But since then, the X, formerly Twitter, owner has backtracked on that statement by repeatedly denying that his father ever owned an emerald mine.

"He didn't own an emerald mine & I worked my way through college, ending up ~$100k in student debt," Musk tweeted in 2019 in response to a user on X.

Elon Musk later claimed to have financially supported his father.

"Errol ran out of money in the 90s," Musk tweeted in 2022. "My brother & I financially supported him & his extended family in South Africa."

Errol Musk, 77, isn't ruling out having more children just yet.

Much like his son Elon Musk — who has 10 known living children — Errol Musk told Business Insider he believes people need to have more children and said he'd consider having more kids.

Musk's father also doesn't drive a Tesla — and doesn't plan to anytime soon.

In January 2022, Errol Musk turned down his son's offer to gift him a Tesla and ship it to his home in South Africa, he told Insider.