Welcome!
Okay McKay is the weekly newsletter from PJ and Thomas, a cozy corner of the internet where we share stories from our home, reflections on family life, and the small joys that make a week (and life) feel meaningful.
It’s a mix of essays, recommendations, interviews with some familiar faces, and little love letters to the everyday, written to feel like a warm conversation by the fire with a cup of coffee in hand. We’re so glad you’ve made it here.
Who Are We?
We’re PJ and Thomas McKay, two guys who grew up together and decided to grow old together. In the photo above, I’m on the left and PJ is on the right. We started sharing our lives online in 2015 under the name The Property Lovers on Instagram when we got married in the living room of the house we were fixing up at the time. Never in a million years did we think pressing post on our first Instagram picture would one day lead to a pilot with HGTV, quitting our day jobs and becoming full-time bloggers, being able to work with our favorite brands and travel with them, and end up here: Sharing our everyday with a thoughtful, warm community of people who are interested and curious about the same details we are that make up a life.
You can learn more about us and our story in our TODAY Show interview.
We’ve been together for 16 years, married for 11, and have three incredible, smart, funny children. We fostered them for two years before officially adopting them in the summer of 2021. We live in the house I (Thomas) grew up in, so getting the chance to see them run around the same 100 year old floors my siblings and I did when we were little is a wonderfully nostalgic experience.
We spend our days walking them to school, helping with homework and attending never-ending birthday parties, while taking care of all the animals and running our farm, Ocoee Farm, renovating houses, trying to maintain a regular gym schedule, and sharing all the ups and downs that make up a whole life.
We do a live chat show every Sunday at 8p ET called Vino & Vent and you can watch it (for free!) on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. It’s a fun way to sit down, relax, sip some wine, and catch up on the week that was with you. We would love to see you at the next one!
You can follow us on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and read our blog, if you want.
Paid Subscriptions vs. Free
While we openly share our lives online (some would use the word overshare), and have for eight years, Substack feels more personal and intimate, like a direct conversation between you and us.
We have been asked for years by contacts from Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok to charge a subscription for our content, and we’ve always said no, but something about Substack feels different. It feels vulnerable and new and exciting.
This will be the first time we have ever put up a paywall for any of our content, so it feels extra special that what we share and reveal on here will only be for our most thoughtful, bighearted readers.
If you’re a paid subscriber to Okay McKay, every week your issue will feature:
Lifestyle recommendations and fun links from around the web
Q&A’s from us (ask us anything and we will answer in each newsletter!)
Essays on small town life, parenting, and marriage, in the same open and honest format that we’ve shared for 11 years.
Interviews with fellow influencers and bloggers about life, their careers, relationship, and coming out stories.
If you’re a free subscriber, your issue will feature:
The Friday edition of our newsletter called A Few Fun Things, which features updates from the week and things we’re loving.
Stay Up-To-Date
You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.
Join the Crew
Be part of a community of people who have been with us for the past 11 years of sharing our lives online.
To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
