Everything to Know About Mary Kay Letourneau’s Family

The late Mary Kay Letourneau was a 34-year-old married mother of four and a respected Seattle-area school teacher when she began sexually abusing her 12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau, in the 1990s.

Mary Kay first met Fualaau when she was his second grade teacher at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Wash., but it wasn’t until the boy was in sixth grade that the nature of their relationship changed, a police investigation revealed, according to HISTORY.com. 

In February 1997, the abuse became public when Mary Kay’s husband, Steve Letourneau, found a cache of letters she had written to Fualaau. Steve confessed to a relative about the disturbing discovery, prompting the relative to report the allegations to school officials and authorities, and resulting in Mary Kay’s high-profile arrest. 

Mary Kay pleaded guilty to two charges of second-degree rape of a child and eventually served six years in prison after violating parole. 

The case sent shockwaves throughout the nation.

By the time Mary Kay was released from prison, the former teacher had given birth to their two daughters, Audrey and Georgia. 

The pair married in 2005 but legally separated almost 12 years later.

Mary Kay died from stage 4 colon cancer in July 2020, her lawyer announced at the time. She was 58. 

Years after her death, the public continues to be captivated by the controversy involving the ex-schoolteacher and her former student.

Mary Kay and her first husband, Steve, were college sweethearts at Arizona State University. She became pregnant with their first child, a boy named Steven Jr., shortly after they began dating. The surprise pregnancy motivated the couple to drop out of school and move back to Steve’s hometown of Anchorage, Alaska. They married in 1985 and went on to have three more children – Mary Claire, Nicholas and Jacqueline – whom they raised in the Seattle suburbs, according to Biography.com.

Following 14 years of marriage and Mary Kay’s two child rape convictions, Steve filed for divorce in 1999, and a judge awarded him custody of their four kids, People.com reported. 

In a 1997 interview, Steve said he was blindsided by Mary Kay’s predatory actions.

“We had created this family together. We made commitments, thick or thin,” he told a reporter. “She was a good teacher, loving wife, loving mother. She was a good person. But does a good mom do what she did? Does a good teacher do what she did? Does a good wife do what she did? No.”

Steve eventually remarried, had more children and relocated back to Alaska. 

He told People in 2017 that he had “moved on” and had “nothing to say” about his former wife. 

Mary Kay’s sexual abuse of Fualaau lasted months before she was charged with two counts of second-degree child rape in March 1997. She remained free on bail, and two months later, she gave birth to her and Fualaau’s first child, Audrey. 

Afterward, a judge sentenced Mary Kay to seven-and-a-half years in prison with all but six months suspended. As part of her plea agreement, Mary Kay was forbidden from continuing contact with Fualaau.

But despite the agreement, Mary Kay and Fualaau, who was 15 years old by that time, resumed communication soon after her release, according to reports. Their meetings resulted in a subsequent pregnancy, and Mary Kay was sent to Washington Corrections Center in Purdy, Wash. 

In 1998, the convicted sex offender gave birth to the pair’s second daughter, Georgia, while behind bars.

Six years later, in 2004, Mary Kay was freed and reunited with the then-21-year-old Fualaau and their two young children. She also reconnected with her four kids from her first marriage, and Mary Kay and Fualaau married the next year.

Despite her sex offender status, Mary Kay claimed she had no regrets about how her relationship with Fualaau, a professional DJ, transpired. 

“Am I sorry that he’s the father of my children and that we’re married, and this is the man of my life?” the mom of six said in A&E Crime Central’s Mary Kay Letourneau: Autobiography, which originally aired in 2018. “No, I’m not.”

Reflecting on the couple’s ups and downs, Fualaau said their passion for each other was genuine.

“After all that’s said and done, at the end of the day, it was a real love story,” he said in the documentary. 

But that love seemingly fizzled when Fualaau filed for legal separation from Letourneau in 2017; they divorced in 2019. Nevertheless, he remained by her side in the final months leading up to her death from cancer in 2020. Mary Kay died surrounded by Fualaau and her six kids. 

In 2022, Fualaau went on to welcome a third daughter, Sophia, from another relationship. The identity of the baby’s mother remains publicly unknown. 

Georgia, 26, made Fualaau a first-time grandfather in January 2024 after welcoming a baby boy with her longtime boyfriend, according to the outlet. In May 2025, Audrey, 27, gave birth to her son, Elias, with fiancé Ethan Porter.

Help and information about sexual abuse is available at the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.