Kelly Matsunaga, 34, is a single mom with three daughters. She launched her fitness business in 2021.
Her classes are "so much more than just fitness," Matsunaga said. She and her students connect over womanhood, motherhood and mental health.
Kelly Matsunaga said she found a community of supportive women through her online fitness classes after she left her husband.
Kelly Matsunaga and one of her three daughters.

Kelly Matsunaga, a single mom and fitness icon who teaches barre and Pilates classes to hundreds of thousands of women online, wasn't supposed to be a businesswoman. She wasn't supposed to work at all.

Matsunaga, 34, was always taught and told to be just two things: A wife and a mother.

Matsunaga, who was raised in a Mormon family but has since left the church, recalls plotting out her future with her parents when she was growing up in Jacksonville, Florida.

"We had sit-down conversations with my parents where they would talk about how it was my job to be a wife and to stay home with the kids," she said.

She got married at 20 years old and got pregnant right away. But the marriage was rocky. She said her husband was emotionally abusive. After nine years and three children, she left him.

With $6 in her bank account, no plans and no career experience − "I had not really been allowed to work," she said − Matsunaga took her kids to her parents' home in Arizona in 2019. Then the pandemic hit, and Matsunaga leaned more than ever into a hobby that would turn into so much more: making workout videos.

With encouragement from her online workout students, Matsunaga officially launched her fitness website, Fit By Coach Kel, in 2021 with 10 videos (recorded on her iPhone) and 30 subscribers. Now, Matsunaga has nearly 500,000 subscribers on YouTube and more than 450,000 followers on Instagram.

"I am so passionate about movement helping people feel confident," she said. "It just connects you to your strength and it helps you develop this love and trust for yourself, when you see yourself doing and accomplishing these hard things."

'So much more than just fitness.'

Ballet has always been a big part of Matsunaga's life. Since she was 2 years old, she was "constantly wearing tutus and twirling around the house."

"I really put all my eggs in that basket growing up," she said. Her dedication landed her a full-ride dance scholarship to Brigham Young University, where she met her husband.

As a young mother, Matsunaga traded in her ballet shoes for a yoga mat. She started coming up with at-home fitness routines she'd post on YouTube, but said she "didn't take it very seriously."

"They were super casual videos," she said, laughing. "Like, my kids would be running around, the dog would be sleeping on the yoga mat."

But after the divorce, Matsunaga needed to figure out how to make money. Her parents finally accepted that, in her situation as a single mother of three, she would have to work. She taught dance and fitness classes at various local studios, but it wasn't lucrative enough to support her children.

She got more serious about her workout videos and tried to build a following on Instagram. It worked.

"The response was just crazy and something I never expected," she said. "Eventually I came out with news of the divorce and stuff, and these women ... they swooped in. They just became the biggest cheerleaders."

Students come to Matsunaga for her workouts, but also for her honesty about womanhood, motherhood and mental health.

"It was so much more than just fitness. It was almost like therapy," Matsunaga said. Women message her "almost every day" to talk about their own abusive marriages, juggling motherhood with other responsibilities and transitioning to single parenthood.

Together, Matsunaga said the women bond over sweat, music and movement.

"It really is a very rewarding business to be in," Matsunaga said.

Teaching her daughters what she wished she knew

Matsunaga loves that her daughters see her working all the time. It's something she rarely saw women do growing up.

She hopes it gives her girls the confidence to pave their own paths.

If they want to get married and have kids one day, "I'll never discourage that," Matsunaga said. But she never wants them to end up in the place she was in after her divorce, with no career experience and having always financially relied on a man.

"Them just watching me helps them to see that that's acceptable," she said. "It's acceptable for them to have hobbies. It's acceptable for you to want to work, and to find joy in work and providing for yourself."

Madeline Mitchell's role covering women and the caregiving economy at USA TODAY is supported by a partnership with Pivotal and Journalism Funding Partners. Funders do not provide editorial input.

Reach Madeline at memitchell@usatoday.com and @maddiemitch_ on X.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: This single mom left an abusive marriage with $6 to her name. Now she’s a fitness icon.

Reporting by Madeline Mitchell, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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