Matthew McConaughey and wife Camila Alves have lived a drama-free life since leaving California for Texas a decade ago.
In an interview with Southern Living magazine, the couple explained that their pace of life has slowed down and their overall happiness has picked up.
"Time slowed down," McConaughey told the outlet. "The clock was right, the body clock. And part of that is ritual; part of that is just the distance between places and the way people move. But it’s also the hospitality, the courtesy, the common sense, the lack of drama."
Alves believes that "the gravity" in Texas has made all the difference. "The gravity is right," she explained.
The Pantalones Tequila partners, who tied the knot in 2012, moved to Austin in 2014. They share sons Levi, 15, and Livingston, 11, and daughter Vida, 14.
Alves, who is a Brazil native, explained to the outlet that she was happy, planting roots with her young family in California, when McConaughey sprang the idea of a move to her.
"We were living a happy life in Malibu," she explained. "We had a beautiful house that we’d built together and put a lot of love and care into. We were raising our kids there. I was growing everything in the yard. I had bees making honey."
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A family crisis required that they fly to Austin to be with the actor's mother, Kay McConaughey.
One night after visiting Kay, Alves recalled being stopped at a traffic light in the passenger seat next to her husband. She told the outlet that McConaughey had "a peaceful but confident, energetic look" on his face in the idling car.
Alves recalled randomly asking her husband, "You want to move here, don’t you?"
"It was like one... two... three...," she said, eyeing McConaughey, "and you went, ‘Yep.'"
He quipped, "And you went –" to which Alves answered, "‘You son of a b....'"
The light turned green shortly after their conversation and she recalled telling him, "Let’s do it," so they did.
The "Dazed and Confused" actor recalled the transition from California to Texas being harder for his wife, but Alves shared that she was used to the Southern way of life since she was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.
"We grew up saying ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘No, sir’ or – as I should say – ‘Yes, ma’am’ and ‘Yes, sir,’" she told the outlet. "It takes me right back to how I was raised."
She has since adjusted and is enjoying life in the Lone Star State.
"In Texas, we were going to the church that we like to attend every Sunday. Sports became a stronger tradition for the kids," she began.
"Ritual!" McConaughey chimed in. "Ritual came back, whether that was Sunday church, sports, dinner together as a family every night, or staying up after that telling stories in the kitchen, sitting at the island pouring drinks and nibbling while retelling them all in different ways than we told them before."
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The transition from Los Angeles to Austin was easier for McConaughey, since he is a Uvalde, Texas, native.
During his interview with Southern Living, the actor told the outlet that he believes everyone should return to where they were conceived – like "full-blown shaking hands with where you were conceived."
"Wouldn’t it be interesting to take people back to where they were conceived and have them spend a month?" he told the outlet, two miles away from Fort Davis, where he was conceived in early 1969. "And then you could ask: How is your life? How are your thoughts? How is your creativity? How do you feel?"
