Ali Larter Details Why Her Family Left LA for Idaho 4 Years Ago

Ali later and her husband, Hayes MacArthur, relocated from Los Angeles to a small Idaho town in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic — and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Our children’s schools were closed during COVID and we were like, ‘Why are we just sitting here?’ It didn’t work at all in Los Angeles,” Larter, 48, said on the Friday, January 10, episode of Live With Kelly and Mark. “So, my husband said, ‘Let’s take a road trip to Idaho (and) go skiing with the kids.’

Larter and MacArthur, 47, have been married since 2008 and share son Theodore, 14, and daughter Vivienne, 9. Ultimately, their closing winter trip turned into a two-month stay.

“We fall in love with nature and the mountains and this whole new life,” said the Landman the actress gushed on Friday. “We completely pivoted and went for it. We literally had our house (in California) for less than a year. We went back to LA and realized we wanted to put our family first.”

Larter added, “Our life is so different there and it’s a small town, and it holds you to a different kind of accountability. It’s something Hayes really wanted to do for our childrenso we did.”

He later further explained that their family now has a “real life” that is “rooted in reality” since they moved to the mountains.

“We’re so grateful,” Larter said, later joking that son Theodore wasn’t happy about the move at first. “He likes fast cars and designer colognes and all that, like, he wants to be in the big city. I’m like, ‘At 18, you can go (back).’ … He really likes it now and I think he understands how great his wolf pack is there.”

According to Larter, she and MacArthur also “feel that if you can hike a mountain, you can run a boardroom.”

“We believe in raising them that way,” he concluded.

Larter and MacArthur settled their brood in the small resort town of Sun Valley, which has hosted many famous faces and acclaimed festivals and business conferences over the years.

“We fell in love with the beauty of the mountains and their quiet majesty,” says Larter Rue magazine in a September 2024 profile. “None of us had ever lived in a small town before. People take care of each other. There is a real sense of community here and we are so happy to be a part of it.”