The Untold Truth Of 90 Day Fiance: Happily Ever After?

90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? is one of the popular spinoffs of TLC's show 90 Day Fiancé. Launched in 2014, 90 Day Fiancé quickly became a big hit for TLC, following the journeys of foreign men and women with American significant others who visit America on a 90-day K-1 visa. The show's premise: within that three-month timeframe, the people from other countries must either get married or else return back to their homelands.

Premiering in 2016, 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? followed the next stage of the journey for the show's more memorable couples who managed to get married, and even some who didn't yet but still kept their long-distance relationships together. These couples "quickly realize that the honeymoon is over as real life sets in," declared TLC in its description of the show. "Each couple has a quick dose of reality and drama unfolds when married life in America doesn't live up to their expectations."

Fans may think they know all about the couples who've appeared on the show, but there's a lot to learn about the untold truth of 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?

Ratings for the first season of 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? were strong, which led TLC to hatch some big plans. As TheWrap reported in 2016, the cable channel renewed the spinoff for a second season — and that wasn't all. With one spinoff already a confirmed hit, TLC launched another one, Before the 90 Days, focusing on couples in similar circumstances, with the twist being that these long-distance lovers have only ever communicated online and haven't yet met face to face.

According to TheWrap's report, ratings for Happily Ever After? were the same as the original 90 Day Fiancé, with each show averaging 1.6 million viewers that season. In fact, the week TheWrap's report came out, the two shows resulted in "TLC's highest-rated Sunday primetime of the year among women 18-49 and 18-34."

Ratings for Happily Ever After? and the other 90 Day Fiancé shows just kept on growing. In 2018, TLC announced it was renewing all of its various 90 Day Fiancé shows, which had grown to also include 90 Day Fiancé: What Now?

Ohio's Danielle Mullins and Mohammed Jbali, who hails from Tunisia, were one of the worst 90 Day Fiancé couples who appeared in 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After's first season after their "tumultuous" relationship story was documented in the original series. Happily Ever After? chronicled their quickly unravelling marriage, which ended when Jbali, who is years younger than Mullins, walked out on her just two months after receiving his green card. Their separation led to a legal battle, with Mullin's attempts at having the marriage annulled and her ex deported proving unsuccessful. The couple finally divorced in 2017.

"I felt used, so I filed for an annulment. That was my best chance to get him deported," she said on the show, as reported by E! News. "But when he begged me to file for a divorce instead, I gave in so he could stay in America."

In a 2019 update, Mullins told InTouch that she now had a new man in her life — although this time she's not jumping into marriage right away.

Some of the couples who appear on 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? manage to attain a certain level of celebrity, but they sure aren't doing it for the money. That came to light when several members of the cast launched GoFundMe pages and began charging fans for video messages. One such cast member was Danielle Mullins, whose own GoFundMe money-raising effort has since been deactivated after raising a mere $658. The stars have reportedly taken to the scandal-ridden GoFundMe site because, as a source revealed to Radar Online, 90 Day Fiancé only pays members of its cast $1,000 to $1,500 per episode. Those who make the cut and are asked to return for Happily Ever After?, said the source, will see a salary increase, although the source said the pay for those couples "doesn't go up much more."

However, that doesn't hold true for the foreign men and women visiting the U.S. on K-1 visas. "They can't even get paid because they have to wait for a work permit," the source added, pointing out that they do get paid "if filming takes place in their country."

Toronto Sun TV writer Rita DeMontis admitted that 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? was her favorite guilty pleasure, and she detailed why fans came to love the show so much. "It has everything — sex, insinuations, jealousy and someone who smells," she wrote in 2017. "Couples arguing, making up, making out, marking up their significant other's cars. It's cringe-worthy and delicious at the same time." 

She singled out Danielle Mullins and Mohammed Jbali, writing that viewers "see the whole mess unravelling right before your eyes with tears and character assassinations and Mohamed revealing for all to hear that he couldn't make love to his wife because she 'smelled.'" She went on, "Initially, everyone booed for Mohamed as a heartless piece of work who used Danielle to get into the U.S., legally. Did he marry for the green card? Who cares! He's put up with a snivelling stalker who has harassed him with hundreds of emails and calls, followed him across the country, called all his friends, and threw stuff at him." Clearly, Happily Ever After? can compete with all the uncomfortable moments on 90 Day Fiancé, one of TLC's worst shows.

Not all the couples on 90 Day Fiance: Happily Ever After? end up unhappy, but there are still complications. Take Nicole Nafziger and Morocco-born Azan Tefou, whose 90 Day Fiancé story continued in Happily Ever After. Nafziger's situation was complicated by the fact that she has a young daughter and has skeptical parents who think Tefou is using her to get a green card. 

In Happily Ever After?, Nafziger traveled to Morocco to marry Tefou, and they wound up canceling the wedding — twice. InTouch shared a screenshot of her Instagram Story post, in which she clapped back at a fan's statement that the couple had split. "That's funny, no one told me and Azan that," she wrote, later adding, "We may be thousands of miles apart, but I love you from Florida to Morocco, then to the moon and back." 

According to InTouch, she explained she canceled the wedding was because there was "too much pressure" and "not enough time or money." She wrote, "You can't rush this kind of stuff. Do it in the right moment and it wasn't the right moment yet."

While 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? stars Nicole Nafziger and Azan Tefou have clearly been among the 90 Day Fiancé franchise's more entertaining and memorable couples, not all of her antics have gone over well with fans. In fact, back in 2017, one irate viewer actually launched a Change.org petition, calling for TLC to not renew Nafziger's contract due to what that viewer characterized as "domestic abuse" toward her fiancé. "Due to the nature of violence in the USA, to help end this cycle of domestic abuse TLC and Sharp Productions need to cease any and all contact and employment with Nicole immediately," the petition read.

As it turned out, not too many viewers felt the same way, and the petition was something of a bust, as only 346 people signed before the petition was shut down.

Meanwhile, another petition hilariously called for ABC to make Nafziger the star of the next season of The Bachelorette, so "she will have the love and support she truly deserves!" That petition was even less successful, attaining only 72 signatures.

Molly Hopkins and Luis Mendez made it to the altar in 90 Day Fiancé, but, when they appeared in 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? there was trouble brewing. Their age difference — Hopkins is 15 years Mendez's senior — didn't help matters, and neither did the fact that he didn't get along with her teenage children. In his late 20s, Mendez showed no interest in fatherhood.

When the couple was revisited in Happily Ever After?, viewers watched their fragile marriage deteriorate on camera, and few were surprised when they split up six months after the wedding. What did surprise fans was Mendez getting married to another woman just five months after his divorce from Hopkins was finalized. "I feel it clearly shows he was possibly using me and my finances to get here because our divorce was final in May," Hopkins told Us Weekly. "So he either already knew her and had a plan all along and I'm a fool, or we are both fools if she doesn't know him ... may it work out because I'm glad he's gone."

Ashley Martson met Jay Smith while vacationing in Jamaica, and their romance and subsequent engagement were chronicled in 90 Day Fiancé. In an episode of 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?, however, the relationship took a nosedive when Martson learned that Smith had been cheating on her.

Martson did not take it well. "You're a f***ing piece of s***," she yelled at him after he confessed to his infidelity, as reported by E! News. "I hope you know that. I hope your d*** shrivels off and you f***ing rot in h*** and you die. Way to use someone for a green card."

Smith didn't exactly smooth things over when, while discussing his cheating, he asked her, "Whose fault is that?" At that point, she went ballistic and threw him out of the house, later calling police to report an altercation and reveal his illegal-immigrant status to authorities (their fiancé visa had expired and she hadn't gotten around to renewing it). "Our marriage is over," she declared to the camera, later claiming to InTouch that Smith had cheated on her with six different women.

Russ and Paola Mayfield are one of the franchise's success stories, still happily married years after their first appearance in 90 Day Fiancé.

While the couple is still going strong — and, in 2019, welcomed their first child together — they admitted their road to happiness has not been without obstacles. Perhaps the biggest, the 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? stars admitted, was being filmed for a reality show in the first place. "At the beginning, for me, it was really hard. My English was really bad so I needed to ask my husband what these people were [saying] about me," Paola told Fox News. "Now this is my fifth season. It's like, no matter what you do, people are going to talk bad or good and you just have to deal with it. You can be the best version of yourself but some people are not going to agree with that."

For Russ, the secret is simply to avoid social media as much as possible because "it really is distracting because you get engulfed in it."

Amidst all the drama on 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?, it's arguable that no couple on the series has been more volatile than Colt Johnson and his Brazilian bride, Larissa Dos Santos Lima. After spending a short time together, Johnson proposed, and Lima moved into his Las Vegas home. After they got married in the summer of 2018, things quickly went downhill, culminating in Lima's arrest for domestic violence. Two days after she was arrested again in January 2019, Johnson filed for divorce (via E! News). 

Things became even worse when they appeared on a special "Judgement Day" edition of Happily Ever After?, with Johnson appearing in the studio while Lima was in another location. After Johnson expressed his desire for a reconciliation, Lima dashed those hopes by bringing her new boyfriend on camera. "I poured my heart out to you and you're laughing, making fun of me," Johnson said in the episode. "Larissa made it very clear to me that she doesn't care about me anymore. I don't care about her anymore."

Chantel Everett and Pedro Jimeno remain one of the more engaging couples to emerge from 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? thanks to their endlessly volatile relationship. After traveling to his home in the Dominican Republic, Everett spoke to E! News about their status, and she admitted that living while the cameras rolled was not easy. 

"It's hard to be vulnerable under the public eye — you feel like you're in a fishbowl — but after a while, you forget the cameras are there," she admitted.

Everett also shared what she had learned from her experience on Happily Ever After? "I used to watch 90 Day Fiancé while Pedro and I were dating and early in our engagement, and I really wanted to be a part of the show because I wanted to show everybody how perfect I thought my relationship was," she added. "Being on the show has ... made me realize that there is no such thing as a perfect relationship and we have our flaws." In the interview, she also noted, "We disagree on a lot of things..."

Bad behavior is typically frowned upon — unless you're the star of a reality TV series. Then, it's often encouraged and even rewarded. Such was the case with a 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? episode that documented Chantel Everett and Pedro Jimeno attending a family dinner that became so heated that a brawl broke out right at the table.

As The New York Times pointed out in an article about the 90 Day Fiancé franchise, "that scuffle earned its participants their own spinoff." The Family Chantel premiered in July 2019. 

"This is an awesome moment for TLC, as we create a family show based on one of our most popular 90 Day couples, and on a whole new night," said Howard Lee, president and general manager of TLC, in the announcement for the new series. "Our fans can't get enough of Pedro, Chantel and their larger-than-life families. For a brand known as THE destination for love, relationships and family shows, The Family Chantel hits the bullseye."

Usually, the fights viewers see on 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? occur between the couples, but, while taping one of the show's "Tell All" specials, Chantel Everett and Colt Johnson — who are each half of a different couple — got into it. While the members of the cast hung out in a dressing room before the taping, Everett asked Johnson if he was happier without Larissa Dos Santos Lima in his life. "Oh, yeah, I'm totally happy," he said sarcastically. "I love going through a divorce. I love going through the stress and drama."

A heated divorce-related argument ensued, with Everett remarking that Johnson seemed to love his mom more than he did his ex-wife, which prompted him to tell her to "please shut the f*** up."

"When you marry somebody, you're supposed to leave and cleave to your wife," Everett preached to Johnson, who pithily responded, "Chantel, you don't know s***, so keep your mouth shut. How about that?" Pedro Jimeno wound up pulling his furious wife away and out of the room so everyone could calm down before the taping.

Some 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? couples have fulfilled the promise of the show's title, and, as of this writing, four of them have taken the next step by welcoming babies into the world, as noted by TV Insider: Russ and Paola Mayfield, Brett Otto and Daya De Arce, Melanie Bowers and Devar Walters, and Elizabeth Potthast and Andrei Castravet. 

"Being parents is the most amazing thing," Castravet told Parade of being a first-time dad. "Like, one more reason to live. Because when you look at the child, it's just like, this is what you live for right now. So, that's cool."

In October 2019, another of the show's couples revealed they'd be welcoming a new addition to their family: Loren and Alexei Brovarnik. "It's a surreal moment in our lives. For me, I see a lot of people I know (personally) announcing their own exciting news, and now it's our turn," Loren told Us Weekly. "I'm excited, terrified, over the moon, nervous and so much more! Alex is hands down the best partner I could have ever asked for during this time."