'90 Day Fiancé: Who Is Laura Jallali's New Boyfriend, Tony — And What Happened To Aladin?
Laura and Aladin split not long after the wedding. Who is she dating now?
Youtube 90 Day Fiancé: Self-Quarantined has been giving audiences a peek into the current lives of former cast members of TLC's hit franchise. Many of the couples are still together and seem to be happily married. But there are some who have broken up with their prior spouses and have moved on to new relationships.
One of the people seeking greener pastures is Laura Jallali. Fans recall that she moved to Qatar to marry a man named Aladin who was 22 years younger than she is. That marriage crashed and burned and Jallali left Qatar for Ecuador after her divorce. Now she is trapped there due to coronavirus travel restrictions and can't get back to her native Canada.
But don't worry; Jallali is passing the time pleasantly. She has a new long-distance relationship to keep her busy.
Who is Laura Jallali's new boyfriend, Tony?
But first, let's back up.
Who are Laura and Aladin?
Laura and Aladin met online and exchanged Facebook Messenger messages for eight months before Jallaii booked a flight to Qatar to meet Aladin. Within three days of her touchdown in the Arab country, the couple was engaged. It wasn't so much that they were head over heels in love with one another, however. It was that the only way they could legally share a hotel room in the conservative nation was by being married. They decided to make a go of it, however, and Laura made plans to leave her family behind and move to be with her husband.
Jallali with her ex-husband Aladin.
Was their relationship ever a good idea?
Aladin wasn't native to Qatar, he was originally from Tunisia and was living in Qatar to work as a personal trainer. He was a practising Muslim and expected his wife to conform to the more conservative standards he was used to, which was a problem for her. She was fond of walking alone to the coffee shop and wearing western attire. Her behavior sparked multiple fights between the couple. They also clashed over Jallali's 22-year-old son Liam, who never approved of his mother marrying a much-younger man from across the world. Liam cast a negative pall over their big traditional wedding in Tunisia, though he eventually seemed to accept his mother's choices, whether he liked them or not.
There was a lot going on with Jallali off-camera.
Of course, there was more to it than fans initially got to see on camera. It turned out that Jallali wasn't American; she is a Canadian citizen and she was living in the US on a temporary visa to be near her son, who is a U.S. citizen. Part of her move to Qatar was driven by the fact that she had to leave America at the end of her visa. A marriage based on the desire for a weekend hook-up and perpetuated because one member of the couple needs a new country to live in isn't anyone's dream of happily-ever-after. Moreover, Jalalli accused her now-ex-husband of using her to get to North America, while he said she took money from him and never paid him back.
Unsurprisingly, the pair split up not long after their season aired.
Jallali headed overseas to take a break after the split.
In the months following their break up, Jallai moved to Ecuador, where she was briefly linked to a man named Raul. Audiences already knew Raul, who had previously been involved with another 90 Day Fiancé star, Evelin. That didn't last and Jallai has been living on her own and she says she was socializing with other Canadian ex-pats.
She can't leave the country now.
Now, Jallali is stuck in Ecuador thanks to the full lockdown of travel in and out of that country. On 90 Day Fiance: Self-Quarantined, she explained that she had been there for months but was ready to go back to Canada. However, her planned flight out of the country was cancelled and she hasn't been able to get on another place with the travel limits in place.
She isn't totally desolate in her beachfront isolation, however. She connected online with a dental student named Tony in California. "He is 25 and very delicious to look at,” Jallai said to the camera. “I actually worry that Tony is too good to be true.”
This is almost identical to things she said about Aladin during her first run on the show, when she said, “This Tunisian man started chit-chatting with me and I was just like ‘Wow. He’s gorgeous. What is he looking at me for?'”
Jallali is waiting out the quarantine with her dog.
Who is Tony?
On the episode, Jallali can be seen chatting with Tony — just audio, no images — and he talks about getting to California so they can meet. He tells her that he loves her, which she doesn't reciprocate. She explained that she wasn't ready to say it to him and while she likes the affection, she is hesitant to commit. “Tony’s young,” she told the camera. “He still has a lot of growing up to do yet.”
The episode was frustratingly short on details about Tony. The photos TLC agreed to show blurred the dental student's face and while the shot of his bare chest was certainly attractive, it didn't give us any hints who he might be.
Whoever he is, he and Jallali won't be able to meet up any time soon. She was unable to get a seat on a COVID-19 relief flight to Canada and no additional accommodations have been made to get her home.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.