Reactions of laser-ablated scandium, yttrium, lanthanum, and several lanthanide metal atoms with dimethyl ether have been studied using matrix isolation infrared spectroscopy. Identifications of the major products, M(CH(3)OCH(3)) and CH(3)OMCH(3) (M = Sc, Y, La, Ce, Gd, Tb, Yb, and Lu), are supported by experiments with deuterium substitution as well as theoretical calculations. It is found that most ground-state metal atoms react with dimethyl ether to give:the M(CH(3)OCH(3)) complexes spontaneously on annealing, which isomerize to the CH(3)OMCH(3) insertion products with visible irradiation. Density functional calculations reveal that the M(CH(3)OCH(3)) complexes possess C(2v) symmetry with metal atoms bound to the oxygen side of dimethyl ether, and bent geometries are found for the inserted CH(3)OMCH(3) Molecules with direct M-O and C-O bonds. All of these products have the same ground states as their corresponding metal atoms except for Tb. Although the Lu(CH(3)OCH(3)) complex is predicted to be a stable molecule, it is not observed in the experiment due to the low energy barrier for the subsequent C-O bond insertion reaction.