Courtesy of @pauljasonstaehle/Instagram
90 Day Fiance’s Paul and Karine Are ‘Officially’ Back Together: ‘Karine Begged Him to Come Back’
Reunited! 90 Day Fiancé stars Paul Staehle and Karine Staehle (née Martins) are “officially back together,” a source exclusively reveals to In Touch.
“Paul was in Brazil, Karine begged him to come back,” the insider close to Paul, 40, says.
Just three months prior, the dad of two shared a “Happy Birthday” tribute to Karine, 27, via Instagram in January.
The couple’s reconciliation comes five months after Karine split from ex-boyfriend and Bachelor Nation alum Josh Seiter in December 2022.
“They met on Instagram,” a separate insider told In Touch about the former pair’s relationship, which began in November 2022. “They began messaging and immediately made a connection. They were physically attracted to each other at first, but they’ve since bonded over deeper things like Karine’s kids and the death of Josh’s dad. They went from messaging on Instagram to texting pretty quickly.”
Even though the Brazil native had moved on romantically, Paul insisted to blogger John Yates at the time that he and Karine were “friends” and talked “constantly” amid their past custody battle over sons Pierre and Ethan.
The TLC personalities were introduced to fans during season 1 of 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days in August 2017. Despite dealing with the difficulties of cultural differences, Paul and Karine’s romance had a humble beginning. Following the season 1 tell-all reunion, the couple were planning their wedding and wanted to split their time between Brazil, Karine’s home country, and Louisville, Kentucky, Paul’s hometown, in order to balance spending time with their families.
Nevertheless, the reality TV stars’ relationship soon faced multiple ups and downs, as the two broke up countless times over the course of their romance. They tied the knot in November 2017 and welcomed baby No. 1, son Pierre, in March 2019 and baby No. 2, son Ethan, in February 2021. However, fans watched drama in their marriage unfold during an altercation between Paul and Karine in July 2020 that Paul captured via Instagram Live.
While they initially filed restraining orders against one another at the time, In Touch later confirmed that the couple had dropped them by September 2020. However, more than one year later, the couple was seen engaging in another heated argument in a video that went viral in December 2021. Although it wasn’t clear at what point the clip was filmed, Paul and Karine split soon afterward.
In June 2022, the then-estranged pair ended up losing custody of their kids when the National Center for Missing and Exploited sent out a missing person alert for Pierre, 4. Pierre was thought to have been missing because he and Ethan, 2, were already in Child Protective Services’ (CPS) custody at the time. On July 3, 2022, Pierre was found, the Louisville Metro Police Department confirmed to In Touch at the time. Pierre was then reunited with his brother, Ethan, in the same foster family.
In November 2022, Karine asked fans for help by starting a fundraiser to hire a lawyer in order to regain custody of her and Paul’s kids.
“My two Brazilian children were taken from me by American CPS because me and my husband argued in front of our children [sic],” Karine’s fundraiser’s description read. “They will not give me an opportunity to get my kids back.”
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