Mary’s middle name is LeReve, which was her grandmother’s name, and that’s how she came up with the name for her site, Living LeReve—literally, “living the dream.”
“I just want everyone to do that for themselves,” she explained, “no matter what you’re doing or how you’re doing it, something that is making you happy that is fulfilling in life. So, that’s what I did and kind of everything I share on it is meaningful to me.” At first she was surprised to find out how much she had in common with so many of her readers as a wife, mom and businesswoman, and now she relishes connecting with people from all over the world.
She’s also been able to hear more about the perception some people have about so-called basketball wives, the presumption being that they live privileged, pampered lives thanks to their husbands’ huge contracts, the end. (Mike signed a five-year deal said to be worth $153 million with the Grizzlies in 2016.)
“I thought for sure that everyone just assumed that because he’s signed a big contract and we have a lot of money, that we buy a lot of things and live a luxurious life and don’t have to work hard or don’t have to do much,” Mary said. And she was curious about how she was coming off, on her site and social media.
“That’s where we share so much but that’s where it gets so tricky, because it seems like we share a lot but it actually is only a small small fraction of who we are, in what we do in our everyday lives,” she noted. “And I was blown away at all the positive responses…Even just [the ones that say] how much you seem to love your kids and enjoy being a mom and support your husband and love to be outside—like everything that I truly feel is what they said they saw through social media, so I was really happy about that.”
“And,” she continued, “I do worry a lot about the misconception of athlete families and wives and stuff like that, but I think I hope it’s getting better. I feel like it kind of goes in waves, of how we dress at games and how we are looked at, what we say and things like that, but I’ve just met so many incredible women who are like me—really really good friends today that I’m so thankful for and I can’t imagine not having them in my life or people saying negative things about them, or anything like that, so I’m very lucky.”
