Beyoncé may be busy kicking off her Cowboy Carter Tour this week, but she still had time to send her mom, Tina Knowles, a special message to celebrate the beginning of her book tour.
The 71-year-old mother of Beyoncé and Solange Knowles launched the book tour for her memoir, Matriarch, Wednesday, April 30, just outside of Washington, D.C., in Oxon Hill, Md. Former first lady Michelle Obama joined as her special guest for the evening, at which Parade was present (other announced guests throughout the tour include Keke Palmer, Gayle King, Tyler Perry and Tamron Hall).
“Hey mama, it’s B,” Beyoncé said in a pre-recorded voice memo, sounding emotional at times. “I’m so excited because I want to congratulate you on having the No. 1 book on the New York Times bestseller list. I’m so proud of you, and this is so well-deserved. Congratulations.”
The Matriarch book tour began on the heels of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour, which kicked off Monday at Sofi Stadium in Los Angeles with a three-hour, 36-song celebration of her Grammy Award-winning country album.
Knowles told Obama “it was scary” for her full story to finally be out for the world to read — she attributed a lack of sleep in the past few days to that fear, as well as her daughter’s Cowboy Carter Tour, for which she was in attendance on Monday.
“We didn’t plan it that way, but I wanted the book out for Mother’s Day,” Knowles said of the scheduling overlap.
Oprah Winfrey, a longtime friend of Knowles who recently chose Matriarch as an Oprah’s Book Club selection, also sent in a pre-taped video to celebrate her pal’s success.
“Hello, D.C., hello Michelle Obama and hello Tina Knowles,” Winfrey animatedly greeted the audience. “This news just in, you’re No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list! … Matriarch, No. 1!”
Ahead of Knowles’ book release on April 22, she revealed a private breast cancer battle: Last July, her doctors discovered stage 1 breast cancer in her left breast. Knowles opened up to People about being grateful it was caught early despite missing her last scheduled mammogram.
“It could have been stage 4 by the time I went,” she said. “So I wanted people to think about that for a second. One of the best things to come from this is that on my Instagram, I can’t tell you how many people said, ‘I’m going to go get my mammogram (because of you).'”
Beyoncé took the news of her mother’s initial diagnosis “well, staying positive, and I could already feel her mind racing, focusing on this as a task to tackle with precision,” Knowles wrote in the book. Solange told her, “Mom, we are going to take care of this.”
Her daughters — along with “bonus daughter” Kelly Rowland and niece Angie Beyince — “became my team,” Knowles added in the book. She’s now cancer-free and advocating for others to be vigilant about getting tested regularly.
Knowles’ ex-husband Mathew Knowles, father to Beyoncé and Solange, has also previously battled breast cancer. He was diagnosed with stage 1A breast cancer in 2019 and is now cancer-free after a mastectomy.
“This is genetics,” he said in a 2019 interview with Good Morning America. “It also means my kids have a higher chance, a higher risk. Even my grandkids have a higher risk. And they handled it like they should: They went and got the test.”
