Robin McGraw is ready to put all those plastic surgery rumors to rest.
Fans of the best-selling author have wondered if she went under the knife for a face-lift years ago. And the wife of talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw is finally revealing the secret to her youthful look.
On this week's episode of her podcast "I've Got a Secret! with Robin McGraw," the 66-year-old admitted that she did have a cosmetic procedure a few years back, just not a face-lift. As it turns out, McGraw got an eyebrow transplant, and it totally changed her look.
“It brought my entire face into proportion,” she said.
For years, McGraw hated her lackluster brows, so when she discovered that an eyebrow transplant was an option, she jumped at the opportunity. "(My brows) were just not pretty at all because I tweezed them and they never grew back," she explained in the episode.
A few years ago, the author turned to hair-restoration specialist Dr. Marc Dauer to perform the minimally invasive procedure, which she says totally "changed my look." McGraw invited Dauer to discuss the minor surgery on her show this week.
“Eyebrows are such a defining feature of the face … They’re so crucial to framing your face,” Dauer explained. “If they start too far over or if they’re just missing in different places, it just changes your whole look.”
During the procedure, Dauer removed a small piece of her scalp and extracted the hair follicles in order to graft them onto the eyebrows. Dauer has since started using an even less invasive procedure called Follicular Unit Extraction (FUE), which gives patients the same results.
For either procedure, hair can only be taken from the patient or an identical twin, and with very good reason.
"Hair is an organ just like any other organ. So if you were going to transplant an organ from one person to another you'd have to be on all these immunosuppression medications to allow the body to not reject it," Dauer said.
Dauer said eyebrow transplants are rising in popularity, and he dedicates just about half of his practice to the face-shaping procedure. “People come to (my patients) and say, ‘You look younger’ or, ‘Did you lose weight?’” he said. “They can’t pinpoint it.”
During the podcast, McGraw took a moment to thank Dauer for helping boost her confidence, and admitted that she'd tried to cover up her brows over the years.
"I hated my eyebrows so much that I wore bangs to cover them," she said. "Because of you and my eyebrow transplant, I let my bangs grow out and I was so happy.”