Mina Starsiak Hawk's Family: What to Know About Her Parents and Siblings Amid Their Rift

Good Bones star Mina Starsiak Hawk is currently estranged from her mother, Karen E. Laine, and several of her siblings.

Mina and Laine were the stars of the HGTV show for more than seven years until it wrapped in October 2023, and there was no indication on screen of any bad blood within their family. Behind the scenes, however, things were a bit more complicated.

The series centered on Mina and Laine’s renovation business, Two Chicks and a Hammer, and chronicled their house flips in their hometown of Indianapolis. Along with Mina and Laine, Good Bones featured her brother Thadeus “Tad” Starsiak and occasional appearances from her sister Kelsy Spaeth.

Prior to the series finale, Mina spoke about the challenges of working with her family.

“There’s a lot more construction people don’t see. There’s a lot more contractor issues people don’t see. There’s interpersonal family dynamics that people don’t see,” she told PEOPLE. “There were definitely some challenging [moments] because my mom and I were in some of the most challenging places I felt we’ve been.”

In July 2024, HGTV announced a Good Bones spinoff, featuring Mina and Laine as they tackle separate renovations in entirely different states.

Amid the ongoing drama, here’s what to know about Mina Starsiak Hawk’s family, including her mother, Karen E. Laine, and her siblings CR, William, Tad, Kelsy and Jessica, as well as what led to their rifts.

Their family tree is complex

Mina Starsiak Hawk with her family on Christmas in 2019.

Mina Starsiak Hawk Instagram

In a behind-the-scenes clip of their HGTV hit, Starsiak and Laine explained their blended family and relationships.

Laine had Mina and sons CR Starsiak and William Starsiak with her first husband, Casey Starsiak. Laine and Casey divorced, and Laine went on to marry a man named Randy Gray, with whom she shares daughter Kelsy Spaeth. Laine and Randy eventually divorced, after which she remarried twice more — first to a man named Mick, then to her current husband, Roger.

Meanwhile, Mina’s father Casey remarried a woman named Cheryl, with whom he shared Thadeus “Tad” Starsiak and daughter Jessica. Cheryl died when Tad and Jessica were young, and they grew close to Laine.

The size of their large blended family made relationships more complicated for Mina to navigate.

“I’m trying to navigate a very large, Catholic, Polish family that rides hard on guilt and celebrates everything with everyone,” she said on Mina AF in September 2023. “Setting those boundaries has been tricky and they keep changing.”

She added that while she’s working on herself with therapy and medication, “None of the people that I’m struggling with have been doing any of those things.”

Mina said filming the final season of Good Bones with her mom was tough

Mina Starsiak and Karen E. Laine attends the launch of World Market’s Fall Small Space Collection on August 5, 2017 in Los Angeles, California.

Michael Kovac/Getty 

Karen E. Laine was born on Aug. 10, 1962. She got her law degree from Indiana University Robert McKinney School of Law and opened up her own practice in Indianapolis. When she purchased a home to use as the office of her firm, the property needed repairs. She and daughter Mina did the repairs themselves and eventually became proficient enough to open their own renovation business, Two Chicks and a Hammer, in 2007.

HGTV producers became aware of Laine and Mina’s work and in 2016, Good Bones debuted on the network. Laine retired from Two Chicks and a Hammer in 2019, but remained part of the series.

Mina previously told PEOPLE that the final episodes and season of Good Bones were a trying time for her because she and her mother weren’t getting along.

“There were definitely some challenging [moments] because my mom and I were in some of the most challenging places I felt we’ve been,” Mina said, adding that they actually got into “a knockdown drag-out [fight] during demo.”

“I was like, ‘I wonder if anyone’s going to be able to tell,’” she said. “And of course, you can’t because that’s the idea. People . . . that’s not why they’re tuning in to watch Good Bones. That’s not what they want.”

Her son’s birthday party exposed a lot of family in-fighting

Mina Starsiak Hawk and Karen E. Laine.

Mina Starsiak Hawk Instagram

Much of the family feuding came to light when Mina revealed that she didn’t invite her mother nor her siblings to her son Jack’s fifth birthday party in August 2023, but that with Laine specifically, problems had been brewing for much longer.

“I’m for sure part of the problem, I’m definitely part of the problem, and I’m working on it,” she said on Mina AF‘s Sept. 18 episode. “But it’s not been one thing that my mom and I can go back to and I can say, ‘OK, I forgive you and we’re gonna go past this one thing.’ It’s a cumulative situation from the time I can remember when I was 3, of things that have created the situation that we’re in now, and it’s incredibly hard to undo, particularly with someone who’s not actively in therapy or actively working on themselves.”

Mina said that despite her lack of a relationship with Laine, she wanted Laine to have a relationship with Jack and her daughter Charlie, but that Laine didn’t make an effort to be close with Mina’s kids.

“My mom didn’t call or text or give her a card or drop a present at the door,” she said of Jack’s recent birthday, adding, “It makes me sad. They have so many people who love them and act as their grandparents, and it’s just crazy that my mom and I are in such a way that she wouldn’t even wish my kids happy birthday for whatever reason. I just can’t think of a good reason.”

In October 2023, Mina said that Laine texted her asking to talk about their rift, but that she wasn’t necessarily ready to do so.

Mina repaired her relationship with her brother William

Mina’s brother, William Starsiak, is an osteopathic physician based in Indianapolis. His wife, Lisa Starsiak, works in the same office, Starsiak Aesthetics, as a nurse practitioner. They married in June 2021 and share a daughter, Samayah.

Mina has said her relationship with William is basically “nonexistent” and that they don’t interact often. “It’s complicated without even being complicated,” she said on her podcast Mina AF in August 2023. “We don’t really engage much and the last engagement wasn’t super positive, and that was maybe a year ago.” However, by September, she revealed on Mina AF that she and William “squashed it” and were on good terms.

William appears to also be on good terms with Kelsy, whose baby shower he attended in September 2023. Similarly, on Mother’s Day in May 2023, he called Laine a “beautiful person,” adding, “I’m lucky to be your son.”

She hasn’t spoken much about her relationship with her half-sister Kelsey

Mina Starsiak Hawk and her sister Kelsy.

Mina Starsiak Hawk Instagram

Kelsy Spaeth was born Kelsy Gray on Oct. 15, 1992, to Laine and Randy Gray. She is Mina’s younger half-sister, whom Laine affectionately calls “Baby Kitten.”

Like William Starsiak, she is a graduate of Indiana University Bloomington, where she double-majored in French and psychology. Spaeth’s LinkedIn indicates that she worked as a sales associate for PepsiCo beginning in 2015, then was promoted to a district sales leader. In 2018, she left PepsiCo to join the family business, becoming chief business officer of Two Chicks and a Hammer, a role she kept until February 2021. That March, she joined the Studio Science design company, where she currently serves as director of brand strategy.

She married Neil Spaeth on Nov. 7, 2020, in Indianapolis. Aside from no longer working for Two Chicks and a Hammer, little is known about Kelsy’s current relationship with Mina.

Mina said her brother Tad Starsiak “is not a good person” for her to be around

HGTV

Born Sept. 17, 1993, in Indianapolis, Thadeus “Tad” Starsiak is Mina’s half-brother. Laine raised Tad as her own after the death of his biological mother, Cheryl.

“When I was going through that rough time, every day I woke up and she was there for me,” Tad told HGTV in May 2018. “It’s great having her as a teacher and as another mom.”

Tad is a realtor, real estate investor and general contractor (often helping with demolition on Good Bones) and has a clothing brand called Love Heals. He announced his engagement to Anna Spiars in June 2023, and the sweet moment was captured in Good Bones Season 8.

Tad and Mina are currently estranged, she revealed on her Mina AF podcast in September 2023.

“My brother Tad said some really awful stuff to me and I’m sure he would say that I’ve said some awful stuff to him too. But the most recent stuff he said to me, he can’t say it’s not what he said,” she said. “He can’t say I misunderstood. It’s in text and it’s black and white and that was kind of my final straw there.”

Mina didn’t say what Tad specifically texted her, but she recalled avoiding Tad at family events and said she stopped attending some family events that he will be present for, opting instead to take those she gets along with to dinner individually. “Nothing happened, but I just don’t want to be around him because he’s not a kind person to me,” she said. “And I’m sure he feels the same, in all fairness.”

Mina said she and her husband Steve Hawk discussed that she won’t engage with Tad until he works on himself, whether with therapy or medication, calling him “not a good person for [her] to be around.” Tad hasn’t commented explicitly or publicly about Mina’s remarks, but did post a video on Instagram discussing the importance of letting go of anger.

She hasn’t talked about her relationship with her youngest sister

Jessica Starsiak is Mina’s youngest sister. Born in Indianapolis in 1994, Jessica keeps a low profile. She is a mother of three and manages a Taco Bell restaurant in Indianapolis.

Mina took in Jessica’s daughter Julie, then 2, in August 2016 while Jessica went through a difficult period. Julie stayed with Mina for close to nine months, and Mina says the experience changed her and her other relationships profoundly.

“I think everyone likes me better now that I had Julie, my ‘Juju Bean,’ ” Mina told PEOPLE in December 2017. “I can be somewhat cold, but when you have a kid, you just can’t be.” At the time, she said that Julie was living with Jessica again and that Jessica was “doing well.”

One of her brothers flies way under the radar

Mina Starsiak Hawk’s brother, CR, and her daughter Charlotte.

Mina Starsiak Hawk Instagram

Little is known about CR Starsiak, who keeps a very low profile, has never appeared on Good Bones and has a private Instagram account. According to LinkedIn, CR (real name Casimir Starsiak III) lives in the San Francisco Bay area of California and works for the biotech company Genalyte. He graduated from Purdue University in 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering and has a master’s degree from Stanford University in management science and engineering.

He’s previously worked for McKinsey Corporation as a business analyst and for Verily Life Sciences.

Because CR is so private, little is known about his relationship with Mina, and she hasn’t spoken about her feelings about him specifically.

Mina’s family members don’t own a stake in the business

Mina Starsiak Hawk.

Two Chicks and a Hammer Instagram

In October 2023, during an episode of Mina AF, Mina revealed that her family members don’t own any part of Two Chicks and a Hammer or Two Chicks District Co.

“No one has any skin in the game — not Tad, not mom, definitely not Corey — no one has any money or risk,” she said.

She and her husband are working on a new property for their kids — and extended family

Mina Starsiak Hawk and Steve Hawk with their kids, Jack and Charlotte.

Mina Starsiak Hawk Instagram

Despite Mina’s rift with her family, she and husband Steve took on a lake house property about 35 minutes outside of Indianapolis, in part to enjoy the home with her kids. She said on Mina AF that she and Steve were considering a lake house project “casually” for about three years before pulling the trigger.

“It’s this place that I can see in my mind that’s going to be for my family, but also for my extended family, to make these new, amazing memories,” she said. “I have so many friends that I hear tell great stories about growing up at their grandparents’ lake house and running around in the woods and building forts and just being kids, and I want that for my kids.”

Mina thinks being in the spotlight hurt her family relationships, but loves working in TV

Mina Starsiak Hawk and Karen E. Laine filming Season 8 of ‘Good Bones’.

Mina Starsiak Hawk Instagram

Mina said that she thinks being in the “pressure cooker” of fame may have negatively impacted her relationship with her family.

“I think I knew that this was going to be hard and it was going to challenge relationships, because when you put anything under a spotlight in a pressure cooker, there’s the opportunity to explode,” she said on her podcast in October 2023. “I myself am not stable enough to not explode at times, let alone my whole complicated family organization that was put under the spotlight in the pressure cooker.”

Despite the challenges, Mina said she loves working on TV and that she’ll continue to work with HGTV in the future, with one caveat.

“I think being so young [when the show started], not having the understanding even enough to know what boundaries I needed to set, is what I would say is something I wish I had known,” she explained. “That you need to be firm and understand your boundaries from the very beginning because it’ s really hard to change. It’s hard to go back.”

Mina and Laine are starring in a Good Bones spinoff

HGTV announced a Good Bones spinoff in July 2024. The special limited season will focus on “new beginnings” as Mina works on her Indiana lake house and Laine tackles a run-down bungalow in Wilmington, North Carolina.

In a preview clip from the spinoff shared with PEOPLE in August 2024, Mina said the lake house will be “very healing” for Steve after his mother died of stomach cancer in 2018, followed by his father unexpectedly dying six months later and the loss of his sister Stefanie to ethanol poisoning in 2020.

“He’s going through life the best way he can after just some really, really epic loss in a very, very short amount of time,” Mina said in the clip. “And because his time with his family was cut short, that’s really why we wanted this lake house for Jack and Charlie — really, for the long term, for the memories, for the experiences. So that’s, I think, why it’s really important to both of us.”

The spinoff will premiere on Aug. 14 on HGTV.

Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education