90 DAY FIANCE Are Jay and Ashley still together? How much of their story line is fake and how much is true?

Any seasoned viewer of reality television knows that producers and cast members often take a little bit of liberty with the “reality” aspect of what is shown in an effort to make the shows more entertaining. But 90 Day Fiance Season 6 couple Jay and Ashley seem to be taking it way too far — to the point where the list of things about their story (on and off the screen) that are clearly true is startlingly short.

I will start with that very short list of things about their story that — for now — seem true:

1. Jay and Ashley did get married somewhere at some point, although it does not appear to be Las Vegas or Jamaica. Unless there is another way in which Jay could remain in the United States for so long (see item 2 on this list), then they had to have officially gotten married.

2. The two remained together after filming the show, and were together as recently as last week. Jay and Ashley attended the big 90 Day Fiance party in California in October and were doing cameos together until recently; the latter is something they could not have done in advance. Jay just posted a photo this weekend of Ashley that he appears to have taken from just outside the couple’s residence. And based on what is in the photo, it is definitely recent.

OK: aside from biographical information and other basic info, that’s pretty much it for what we *know* to be true.

UPDATE – Ashley has clarified things a bit by sharing her and Jay’s actual marriage certificate and explaining why they had three weddings. She also posted a photo of Jay’s K-1 visa documents to debunk those theorizing that he entered the country some other way?

Now, on to the “fishy” list of things that I have my doubts about. And those doubts are only strengthened by how much longer this list seems to get every week!

1. Jay and Ashley’s wedding. I could find no record of Jay and Ashley being married in Las Vegas, so I have to assume that the Elvis ceremony was purely for the cameras. The wedding photos that “leaked” online that appear to have been taken near a beach, but Jay later claimed that they were from an unofficial ceremony in Jamaica in 2017 for his family and friends.

“We didn’t get our real dream wedding in America but before I came to the US we did get a beautiful Jamaican celebration,” Jay explained on Instagram, before revealing that he and Ashley later took a ten-day Mexican vacation as a sort of unofficial honeymoon.

Here are a few sample photos from Jay and Ashley’s Jamaican faux wedding, which looked to be WAY nicer than their hunka, hunka burnin’ love Las Vegas kitsch-fest:

So, apparently Jay and Ashley had a HUGE wedding in Jamaica; then, he came to America and they had an impromptu wedding in Las Vegas. But, they actually officially got married somewhere else, possibly at a local courthouse. (Ashley’s former BFF Natalie later confirmed that Jay and Ashley were already married when they went to Las Vegas.) It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that the couple’s plan all along was to have the wedding they cared about in Jamaica, and then just make it official once Jay’s K-1 visa got approved. Then, they got cast on the show and came up with the Las Vegas elopement story to have something to film.

BUT, the couple did have an online wedding registry with a date and location in Ashley’s hometown of Mechanicsburg, so it does appear that they planned to have some sort of ceremony there. My theory is that Ashley and Jay did have their scheduled wedding in Mechanicsburg, but that they didn’t want TLC to film it because Ashley’s children were going to be in attendance. (It is also my theory that the alleged racist comments on their wedding registry was just a good way to sell the change of venue.)

2. The hateful racist comments on Jay and Ashley’s wedding registry. As I have previously stated, we were the first to report on the couple’s wedding registry back in September, and at the time I didn’t see any of these racist comments. It would make sense that they appeared after I first saw the registry, however, so that doesn’t mean that they weren’t posted.

That being said, I’m not seeing any screen caps of all the alleged comments. And even if there were screen caps, it’s my impression that all the comments were supposedly from a single one of Ashley’s exes. Ashley doesn’t seem averse to throwing ANYONE under the bus, so why wouldn’t she have been at least a little more specific in this case — especially if what she said was true about what was written?

Also, I’m not buying the whole town full of racists angle either. OF COURSE people were staring at Jay and Ashley as they were strolling through the market — that’s what people do when a full camera crew is filming a couple in a public place where that doesn’t usually happen. Yes, racism is a huge problem in this country — I just don’t believe it was as bad for Jay and Ashley in this instance as they made it seem on the show. (Normally, producers work at editing out all the gawking, but it would be super simple to do the opposite.)

3. Ashley and Natalie. These two former besties had a HUGE and seemingly irreparable falling out over Jay. The acrimonious split continued to play out on social media with Natalie allegedly attempting to leak stories about Ashley’s past — including that she was kidnapped, raped, and almost murdered as a teen.

There was a lot of speculation early on that perhaps Ashley was “leaking” these stories about herself and trying to blame Natalie — even though Natalie never actually leaked anything. Another example included a photo of Ashley with a black eye after an alleged altercation with an ex — a photo that Ashley herself posted in yet another preemptive strike, assuming that, just like the kidnapping story, Natalie was going to post it as well.

That theory seemed a bit far-fetched to me at the time, but Natalie recently posted a photo of herself in attendance at Ashley’s Las Vegas wedding, and it’s has completely changed my mind! It seems all of the over-the-top, friendship-ending spats on the show were not real at all. You don’t attend your friend’s impromptu wedding thousands of miles away unless you are still pretty tight!

UPDATE – Another photo of Natalie and her man with Jay and Ashley in Las Vegas:

So, are Ashley and Natalie still secretly friends? I don’t think so. It seems Ashley’s accusations (as well as Jay revealing Natalie’s shoplifting arrests) legitimately severed their friendship. Here is a comment from Natalie on the gallery of photos that included one of her at the Las Vegas wedding — she wrote it in response to someone hoping that she could find it in her heart to forgive Ashley:

I don’t know if there is even a way to forgive someone for lying about you, defaming you making fun of you and making false allegations. Allowing herself and her husband to do mean nasty things to me, there can’t be! I don’t want a fake apology. I don’t have time for that noise. I want everyone to see how horrible of a person she is really, I want her to be a better mother with some dang morals and just stop all the lies and admit she was wrong and what she did to me was wrong and the things she said about me are not true!!! I don’t even care if she admits she was the one who wasn’t a good friend and that she has put me through hell and back all for spotlight it’s really really sad actually so nooooo I don’t even know how I could possibly forgive her I already did once but I see through it all now and GOD DOESNT LIKE UGLY! B

4. Jay “cheated” by creating an online dating profile. We’ve established that Jay and Ashley were apparently already married when they made the trip to Las Vegas. So all of the hubbub over him creating an online dating profile right after they were married is moot, or at best distorted. Perhaps Jay did create a dating profile and struck up a conversation with some woman soon after he and Ashley were married, and they just sort of recreated the scenario after the Elvis nuptials? Either way, the truth was twisted a bit, if not completely fabricated.

Regardless of the truth of it, Jay’s rapid “infidelity” sure was fun for us meme makers!

 

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#90DayFiance Jamaican Jay goes for the post-marital cheating world record #DoucheDash

A post shared by Starcasm (@starcasmnet) on Dec 27, 2018 at 2:44pm PST

 

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A post shared by 90 Days Crazy (@90dayscrazy) on Dec 27, 2018 at 8:16pm PST

On social media, Jay keeps flip flopping between apology and dismissive sarcasm in response to the cheating allegations. He even added some more potential drama to the situation with a recent Instagram post in which he implies that Ashley was into the online infidelity thing as well:

5. Are Jay and Ashley still together or what? As soon as Jay’s alleged chat-cheating was shown on the show, Ashley mirrored the story line on social media with numerous posts suggesting that the couple had just broken up — despite obviously being together for months since the scenes were filmed. Ashley was trying to play it off as though she and Jay had only been keeping up appearances for the last couple months, and that she had finally had enough. That’s just dumb. These two were doing cameos together, along with extremely long Instagram Live sessions together casually hanging out at home. There is NO WAY that struggling to put on a strong face and pretending to still be together despite a heart wrenching separation looks ANYTHING like that. Maybe a few photos and some comments, but not lengthy casual videos just hanging out together and seeming to be completely comfortable with each other.

Most recently, Jay attempted to ramp up the split rumor mill by posting a photo of Ashley talking to a police officer outside by a vehicle. “Okay Ashley call the cops ??‍♂️ guess it’s time to leave now ?,” he captioned the since-deleted image. The photo cane just a couple days after Ashley posted about someone smashing her car while it was parked on Christmas Day. Clearly, it seems that the photo posted by Jay is just Ashley filling out a police report about the accident. But please note: I do think that Jay took the photo, which looks to be out in front of the couple’s residence. If it is an accident report from an incident on Christmas, then that means it had to have been taken in the past week.

Jay also shared a GoFundMe campaign that featured a photo of himself and the description: “Help me get and my feet an a place to stay.” Before you launch into the all-too-familiar knee-jerk reality star GoFundMe rage, you should know that this is most likely a complete joke — perhaps even a page started by someone else that Jay was sharing just to troll folks. Ashley did something similar this week with a GoFundMe set up for her by someone else.

Back to the original question: Are Jay and Ashley still together? There is no smoking gun either way, but given all of the “evuhdense” on “soshul meedya,” my semi-educated guess is that they are still together and doing just fine. According to Reality Show Dramabot 3000’s calculations, their social media antics are roughly 80% marketing and 20% trolling.

Normally I’m all for entertaining reality TV drama, even if the stories are a bit manipulated. But you risk crossing a line when you go this far — especially when the concept of the show is so heavily reliant upon the stories being essentially real. Or at least there is a line for me. And Jay and Ashley have definitely crossed it.

That being said, I have to remember that I am part of the very small percentage of this show’s rather HUGE viewing audience that actually tries to keep up with the drama playing out in real time on social media — a seemingly impossible task given the tsunamic ? show that the Season 6 cast has been online over the last two months. Ratings for 90 Day Fiance are at an all-time high, and the majority of those viewers are blissfully unaware of all the drama going on off screen, or any potential deception going on on screen. I’ve previously commended 90 Day Fiance producers for being marvelous story tellers, and that remains true — even if Jay and Ashley’s story might be a bit more fiction than reality. In other words, IF you believe Ashley and Jay’s story as it is playing out on screen, then I’m sure it’s completely entertaining!

On another positive note, if all the stuff about Jay and Ashley’s story line is as scripted as it seems, they do deserve some credit for their acting skills! (Unlike Russ and Pao.) As evidence, here is a preview of the Tindergate fallout between Jay and Ashley in which producers were obviously slicing a few onions:

90 Day Fiance airs Sunday night at 8/7c on TLC.

Asa Hawks is a writer and editor for Starcasm. You can contact Asa via Twitter, Facebook, or email at starcasmtips(at)yahoo.com