So, what exactly happened after we saw underfunded love birds David Toborowsky, 48, and Chanoknat “Annie” Suwan, 24, wed on the final episode of Season 6 of the American reality TV show 90 Day Fiancé?
If you’re like the staff of Coconuts, you’ve been wondering.
After seeing our viral story on the money drama between himself and Annie, Toborowsky reached out to us to offer an interview telling more about their dramatic love story, what it’s really like to be on the show, and what they plan to do now that they are married.
For starters, after marrying in November, the couple are still living in the firehouse in Louisville, Kentucky, owned by Toborowsky’s best friend, Chris Thienemen, who funded their wedding and also offered Annie US$10,000 to go back to Thailand on the show’s tell-all follow-up episode. About the monetary offer, Toborowsky said, “I was shocked. Annie was like, ‘You can’t pay me to leave him.”
The new husband is not yet working full-time and Annie is still trying to acclimate to the freezing winter weather and to American cuisine. David said, “She visits a nearby Vietnamese market every day and gets ingredients to cook Thai food. She doesn’t like most American foods, like pizza. But she does love hot dogs — especially Ball Park franks,” he said with a laugh. That makes sense, since sausages of all kinds are popular in Thailand.
As far as Annie’s other adjustments, she misses her family terribly and talks to them daily, but hopes to get a college degree in the U.S.
Toborowsky said that it’s actually harder for him to re-acclimate to life in the states than Annie since, as he says, “the country has changed.” He dreams of returning to Thailand to retire and maybe opening a marriage visa-themed beer bar to tie into their appearance on the popular show.
He sees the possible bar as as a meeting point for Thais that want to date foreigners, farangs that want to date Thais, and a place where people can learn and get advice about the K-1 visa process from himself and Annie. “We could also teach American and Thai culture and get away from lots of stereotypes — especially the one that says Asian women are submissive.”
When asked if he had any regrets about being on the show or how they were portrayed, he said he would do it again in a second despite the fact that his parents were really unhappy with how he appeared on the show, especially with his drinking, which was depicted as excessive on the program.
In fact, there is a follow-up show on TLC network called Happily Ever After, which will feature couples that married on 90 Day Fiancé.
Due to his contract with the network, the reality TV actor would neither confirm or deny whether he and Annie will appear on that show, but simply say it was being discussed and the couple hope to appear.
Of course, we had to ask about payment for appearing on the show and, of course, we could not be given a direct answer due to the contract. Toborowsky only said that the payment was “not a lot” and that only he, and not Annie, could be paid since she couldn’t legally work in the U.S. due to her visa.
Most reality TV shows are heavily edited to create drama, or drama is simply added or scripted where none may have existed. When asked about this, Toborowsky said, “A lot of the drama we encountered was real, not scripted. It’s our life, there is drama. It’s edited, of course, for effect and timing.”
One thing he wished had been made clear on the show was that he wasn’t simply living in Thailand and partying. Though he did meet Annie through a mutual friend in the party city of Pattaya, he actually spent much of his time in Thailand teaching in the Bangkok satellite province of Nakhon Nayok. He has a master’s degree in health administration and an aviation degree from the prestigious Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
He also noted that he and Annie had spent more time together than many of the other couples on the show, who routinely admitted they had, for the most part, spent less than a month together in person before becoming engaged. He and Annie lived together in China, where Toborowsky had another teaching position, from from October 2016 until June of 2017.
He went on to explain that, until they started the visa process and came back to Thailand, they did not have money issues since he was working. He said the money issues stemmed from delays in Thailand after he quit his job in China and they waited for the medical, court, and police documents that would allow them to be able to wed in the U.S.
He also mentioned — for anyone interested in the two water buffalo that he purchased for Annie’s parents as part of the dowry — they are healthy and thriving in the countryside of Bueng Kan.
