Photo: TLC
The whole relationship seems like a catfish situation.
By Rebekah Kuschmider — Written on Oct 19, 2019
TLC has brought back the hit show 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days to help fans end the summer on a high note. This season features some returning cast members and a batch of brand new couples who are all trying to navigate the lead-up to applying for a K1 fiancé visa. Most of the couples have only met via social media and video chat and they're planning their futures together on the strength of filtered photos and sexy texts.
One of the new couples is Caesar and Maria. Caesar is a nail technician in his 40s living in North Carolina. Maria is a 20-something Ukrainian. The pair have been dating online for five years but they have never met in person. Caesar is determined to change that fact but Maria isn't cooperating and some people wonder if Maria is even real.
Are Caesar and Maria still together? Or is he being catfished? Read on for details and possible spoilers.
1. Caesar and Maria
The official bio for this couple lays out the basics of their relationship, including some truly mind-boggling financial numbers, “A hard-working nail technician, Caesar has spent over $40,000 to financially support Maria, the beautiful woman he met online, for the past five years." He confesses that he has been sending her about $800 per month, despite his own modest income, because she works as a receptionist. That job apparently doesn't finance her need for nice clothes, hair and makeup appointments, and her other costs of living.
2. Finding love online
He tells the audience that he met her on an app called AnastasiaDate, which is a dating service to connect European women with men around the world. It's not easy to find legitimate reviews of apps like this but a site called HighYa claims that the 10-year-old company has a verification process designed to weed out scammers. Allegedly, any women listing themselves on the site have to prove that they're real and actually look like their photos. But even being able to validate a woman's existence doesn't mean she isn't a catfish out to take a man's money rather than stealing his heart.
3. Long-distance love
Caesar tells the audience that, despite virtually meeting the love of his life five years ago, they've never met in person. They rely on texting and video chat to communicate and Maria also seems to rely a lot on prepared videos that she can send to Caesar. He gushes to producers that she has a bunch of pet names for him like "baby" and "my husband" and she often uses those terms in the videos she sends. One producer asked some hard questions about the videos, pressing Caesar on whether she might be sending out the videos to other people as well. When Caesar demurred and said he didn't believe she would do that, the producer asked if she ever used his name. He didn't answer that question.
The couple has never met in real life.
3. No travel plans
He described several attempts to go visit Maria but explains that all three times, she canceled on him at the last minute. Despite mounting concerns that she might not actually want to meet him, Caesar has been pressing ahead with plans to go see her in Ukraine. He sincerely seems to want to see her home and meet the people around her but in an on-camera phone call, she tells him that the weather will be too cold for that. Instead, she proposes a trip to a resort in Mexico. The only way Caesar can swing such a trip is to borrow money from his boss, which he does, despite his boss's admonishments that everyone he knows thinks he's being scammed. For her part, instead of rejoicing that she's getting an all-expenses-paid trip to Mexico to meet the man she calls "my husband," Maria calls Caesar to claim that recent tensions between Russia and the Ukraine mean she can't fly to Mexico to see him after all. That turns out not to be true and Caesar keeps pushing for her to come to Mexico, even going so far as to spend yet more money buying her tickets for her after she refuses to book them.
Caesar keeps spending money on Maria.
5. Chocolate flavored panties
Despite all the roadblocks Maria keeps tossing at Caesar to keep the distance in the relationship literally thousands of miles, he is determined to meet her. In a preview, audiences see him unpacking in a hotel in Ukraine, bragging about the chocolate-flavored edible underwear he bought for Maria. Does Maria want chocolate flavored-edible underwear? That isn't clear because so far, Maria hasn't appeared on camera to share any of her thoughts. He is also arriving with an engagement he purchased and has plans to propose during the trip.
6. Massive spoiler alert
While most audience members agree that this whole plotline looks like the buildup for a catfishing story akin to the story of Ricky and Melissa last year, the folks at Starcasm did some more digging and discovered that the scam may be bigger than that. According to a Reddit user, Caesar and Maria were in a relationship in the past but split up before they began filming. Maria didn't want to be on the show at all but Caesar was determined to go through with it to boost his acting resume. He has an active resume up on an acting and modeling site called Explore Talent. The Reddit poster who spilled all the details claims to be a nail client of his who also shared that Caeser and Maria never met before breaking up but that the relationship they did have was very low-drama. All the tears and angst are put on for the show.
7. Twitter responds
Many folks on Twitter think the entire relationship is fake and staged for TV, as we reported here.
Are Caesar and Maria involved at all now? Were they ever involved? With this couple, it's hard to say what's real and what's not.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog Stay at Home Pundit and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.