Steven McBee Jr. admits he felt a nudge from his loved ones to settle down with Allie Eklund before their split earlier this year.
“Inherently, there’s a little bit of pressure because my family is who I hang out with,” Steven, 33, exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, July 16. “And so they’re all married up, starting their families.”
The McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys star explained it was a “combination” of loving Allie, 29, so deeply and his brothers’ being wifed-up that made him feel ready for marriage before their ultimate breakup in April. (Cole McBee is engaged to Kacie Adkison, with whom he shares one daughter, while Jesse McBee is married to Alli McBee and also has one daughter.)
The McBee Farm & Cattle Co. CEO admitted, “I don’t hang out with single friends or anything like that. So there’s a little bit of pressure on that end.”
Steven, however, noted that after watching back season 3, which was filmed in fall 2025, his brothers, Cole, Jesse and Brayden McBee, were actually pushing for him to pump the brakes on his and Allie’s relationship.
“I’m also seeing a lot of learning lessons as far as me moving a little too quickly and my family saying, ‘Hey, you better slow down a little bit and make sure,’” Steven said of the “bittersweet” episodes he’s seen. “And I threw all caution to the wind and was like, ‘I’m ready to get married.’”
While his family dynamic did play a part in Steven’s eagerness to get hitched himself, he told Us that his connection with Allie was an even bigger reason he thought it was time to settle down — even though they’d only been dating a few weeks when he started talking about proposing to his siblings.
“Allie was pretty spot on with everything that I was hoping to find in a woman,” Steven shared. “So I was like, ‘Hey, this is it. I found what I’m looking for. I’m good. Like, there’s no time to waste here. Let’s just do it.’”
He noted that the influencer “checked all the boxes” at the time, so he was all in.
During the season 3 premiere of McBee Dynasty, which aired in June, fans were introduced to Allie, a content creator from Texas. Her debut included her first trip to Steven’s family farm in Missouri and their first kiss — which was on camera.
“I wasn’t even aware that that moment was going to happen on camera,” Allie exclusively told Us earlier this month about the unplanned kiss. “We had gone on multiple dates before that, had been talking for weeks prior, and it just happened to line up where we kissed on camera.”
Allie noted it was a “very authentic way of just life,” insisting it “wasn’t intentional” that they shared that moment with the world.
“It was my first time on reality and TV, so a first kiss on a national level is definitely not normal. Which I feel like you can kind of see in my reaction to it,” she added.
When the cameras stopped rolling in winter 2025, Allie and Steven continued to date. However, they hit a bump in the road in April when Steven publicly accused Allie of cheating with another man while she was at Stagecoach Music Festival in California.
Allie denied the allegations and although Steven later issued a public apology for his actions, the pair split for good that same month.
Despite the drama, Steven told Us on Thursday that he has liked seeing his and Allie’s love story unfold on TV even if it didn’t end well.
“I’m grateful for, you know, seeing how happy I was at the time, what I thought the future would hold,” he said. “I’m grateful for what that feeling felt like, and now obviously hindsight’s 20-20.”
Steven confessed, “I hate the fallout. I hate my role in a lot of the fallout. I wish things would have just been handled internally and privately. Obviously, we are where we are now, and we can’t take the past back.”
Allie, for her part, said she didn’t need “closure” from Steven following their split, telling Us in July that she’s closed that chapter.
“When I realized that it was a pattern [on his part] and it wasn’t circumstantial, this was really just the icing on the cake for me. And it was it. There’s no conversation to be had, no closure left,” she shared. “Like, that’s closure enough for me. And when he asked me to have a conversation, a closure conversation, I denied it because there’s when your actions and your words don’t line up. There’s nothing that I can do with that. So, you know, I wish him the best from afar.”
The McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys airs on Bravo Mondays at 9 p.m. ET.
