Andie MacDowell and her then-husband Paul Qualley welcomed their first child, son Justin Qualley, on August 14, 1986. To celebrate Justin’s 35th birthday, MacDowell reflected on becoming pregnant as a young model in New York, struggling to break into acting. She described it as “the greatest blessing of my life.” In a 2021 Instagram post, she shared, “I remember holding him in my arms, walking around the room, looking at him and saying to myself, ‘I am a mother.’ Everything changed about who I was in that moment because I no longer cared about anything like I cared about him.

Andie MacDowell and Paul Qualley’s second daughter and youngest child, Margaret Qualley, was born on October 23, 1994, in Montana. When she was five, her parents divorced, and she moved with her mom and siblings to Asheville, where she split time between her parents’ homes (her dad stayed in Montana, where Margaret spent her early years). Growing up in North Carolina as a “goofy kid,” as Margaret described herself to Harper’s Bazaar, she never dreamed of becoming an actress. Instead, she “dreamed that one day I would be like my older sister.” (Rainey is five years older, and Justin is seven years older.) Margaret later admitted to Evening Standard that her childhood was “weird” but also “lucky.