Each couple featured in “90 Day Fiancé” has taught us valuable lessons about how love sometimes is not enough for a happily-ever-after. The eighth season’s participants Brandon and Julia are one of the biggest proofs of that, as they had to deal with his meddlesome family, cultural differences, lies, and financial issues for a chance to be happy together.
Nonetheless, after appearing in “90 Day Fiancé” and some of its spin-offs, Brandon and Julia’s lives have changed in many unexpected ways.
So what’s going on with Julia and Brandon these days? What happened to his parents? How are they making a living? Keep watching to find out!
Nowadays, Julia Trubkina and Brandon Gibbs are still together, yet their life situation is drastically different from how it was when they debuted in “90 Day Fiancé” in 2021. As many loyal viewers remember, the couple started their journey when Julia traveled from Russia to the US with a K-1 non-immigrant VISA, having only three months to marry Brandon and stay permanently in Virginia.
Initially, one of the biggest problems for the couple was the role of Brandon’s parents Betty and Ron in their relationship, as they meddled in their plans and even dictated their sleeping arrangements. Julia and Brandon overcame that by setting some boundaries between themselves and his parents, regardless of the temporary negative response they got from that. Ultimately, the couple got their happy ending when they married, and moved out of his family’s house.
Following their appearance in “90 Day Fiancé”, Brandon and Julia’s love story was also featured in the spin-offs “Happily Ever After?” and “90 Day Diaries”, the latter which aired in early 2024. The couple’s social media also proves how far their popularity has grown through the show, with each having over 200,000 followers on Instagram.
While Julia and Brandon have done their best to maintain an independent lifestyle, the truth is that they have found many difficulties along the way. In 2021, the couple decided to leave Virginia for Florida, much to Brandon’s parents’ chagrin, but those plans were eventually forgotten when Brandon ‘couldn’t refuse’ the promotion he was offered at his job.
From then on, Julia and Brandon blissfully achieved another milestone in their relationship, by buying a house in Norfolk, Virginia, just a couple of hours away from his family. Nevertheless, their financial situation wasn’t the easiest back then, as Brandon was paying the entirety of their bills while Julia had problems finding a job. Given her background as a dancer in a bar in Russia, Julia resolved to look for a similar job in Virginia, much to Brandon’s disapproval.
Will Brandon be able to come to terms with Julia go-go dancing?! Find out on tonight’s brand new #90DayFiance: Diaries! pic.twitter.com/XRJb3dsHWL
— 90DayFiance (@90DayFiance) January 15, 2024
It wasn’t long before Julia auditioned to become a strip club dancer. The salary and the fact that she didn’t need to wear extremely revealing clothes made the offer very tempting, but Brandon opposed it.
Nevertheless, these days the couple isn’t as against making money through alternative means as they were, as Julia and Brandon now separately sell exclusive adult content on the subscription platform OnlyFans. This is surprising, especially considering Brandon’s family’s conservative views, which didn’t allow him and Julia to sleep in the same room for a while, but only time will tell how this will result for them.
As seen in episodes of “90 Day Fiancé”, Julia was able to stay in the US after marrying Brandon. That means that she changed her status from a K-1 Visa holder to that of a permanent resident, according to American Immigration laws. Fast forward to early 2024, Julia obtained her American Citizenship, proudly showing her new passport on social media, while also answering her followers’ questions about the process.
Despite receiving numerous positive messages from her fans, the fact that Brandon was absent from her citizenship ceremony raised alarms about a possible separation. These rumors strengthened as Julia posted some cryptid stories about ‘upcoming challenges’ on her Instagram, leading many people to believe that Brandon and her weren’t on good terms.
While the several posts which Julia and Brandon share together on Instagram hint that nothing too serious is going on between them, it would be a shame to see one of the most stable and not-too-dramatic couples from the show separate.
The beginning of Julia and Brandon’s relationship wasn’t too different from those that we’re used to seeing in the “90 Day Fiancé” franchise. Brandon first knew about Julia thanks to a mutual friend, not taking them long before they ‘fell in love’ and started a long-distance relationship.
Eventually, Brandon traveled to Russia to meet Julia, who at the time worked as a go-go dancer. Despite his parents’ insistence on him marrying a local girl who was used to their farming lifestyle, Brandon forwent his parents’ plans by proposing to Julia during a trip to Iceland.
It didn’t take long before Julia applied for a K-1 Visa, though her arrival to the US wasn’t well received by everyone. While Brandon’s parents were initially kind to their future daughter-in-law, the relationship between the parties took a downturn when the Gibbs family’s conservative home rules were too hard to deal with for the modern Julia, who was also asked to deal with chores on the farm. The situation hit its lowest point when Brandon blatantly told his parents he was moving out with Julia, as a response to the no-sleeping-together rule they set at home.
Brandon’s controlling parents weren’t the only obstacle in the couple’s path, as there was also Melanie, a friend of Brandon who confronted Julia about the quick passing of their relationship.
One of the most discussed topics when it comes to Julia and Brandon has to do with his parents Betty and Ron, and their increasing disapproval of their relationship. Besides the rules they imposed over the lovebirds at the beginning of their relationship, their meddlesome ways were at their peak on several occasions, such as the time they almost forced their son to hold a second wedding ceremony.
As Julia affirmed in an interview with Entertainment Tonight, her relationship with Betty wasn’t ‘bad’ and was instead normal for in-laws, yet the lack of boundaries that Brandon had with his mom was concerning, and their initial living arrangements didn’t help their case.
Nonetheless, by the time the couple was already living on their own, Brandon couldn’t help but give his mom a key to their house at Christmas. The uncomfortable situation resulted in an enraged Ron, who didn’t hesitate to throw the keys toward his daughter-in-law after noticing her annoyance.
All in all, Julia and Brandon have gone through a lot of rough situations, but it’s his parents who have taken the biggest villainous role in their story. Whether or not their relationship with the older couple eventually gets better, there’s no denying that their interactions have turned into unforgettable TV moments.