90 Day Fiancé alum Paul Staehle is doing okay.
The TLC personality was presumed missing last week when his on-again-off-again wife, Karine Staehle (née Martins), shared cryptic posts about his location. Now, Paul says he was never missing — let alone dead — to begin with.
Paul told TMZ he’s been traveling and living alone in Brazil. Last week, he took a boat ride and temporarily encountered a “hiccup” on the trip. In fear, he reached out to his mom to contact emergency personnel who could send a return boat. Then, Paul’s phone died.
He and his boatmate — who was a fan of 90 Day Fiancé — ended up spending “a few days” at someone’s floating house in the Amazon, where he didn’t have a phone charger.
Paul addressed speculation that the entire ordeal was a hoax. “If that was the case, I would have gone on Instagram Live, or I would have posted things,” he told the outlet. “I never wanted any of this stuff to go public.”
It did anyway as Paul’s mother gave the text messages to 90 Day blogger John Yates. As seen on his Instagram profile, one message included Paul saying, “I f — -ed up real bad,” before he went silent.
That’s when Karine stepped in to share a tribute post. “Not all of our memories were bad. Our children loved you very much,” she wrote on Instagram alongside a video of memories from their tumultuous relationship. “We will never forgot [sic] you or the good memories we all shared.”
The post has since been deleted, and Karine has made her account private.
“In all honesty, I didn’t want to add gasoline to all these different fires,” Paul told TMZ, adding that he didn’t want people to “twist” his explanation.
Paul and Karine appeared on season 1 of 90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Days. Their nuptials were featured in the show’s second season.
In 2019, the couple welcomed their first child, a boy named Pierre. Later that year, Paul alleged Karine had cheated on him, and the pair separated. Karine denied the cheating allegation.
The pair has rebounded a few times since then. They welcomed a second son, Ethan, in 2021.
The couple’s relationship status has been hard to follow for many 90 Day fans. But most recently, in April, Paul and Karine announced they’d reconciled again. They seem to have split since.
There have been a few other missing persons reports connected to the pair. Last year, Paul and Pierre were reported missing, and an Amber Alert was issued for the child’s safety. Once reunited with family, the couple’s two children were taken into Child Protective Services. Paul denied kidnapping the child.
Paul also once reported Karine missing in 2020, though she later denied being missing on her Instagram Story. In 2021, she filed a protective order against Paul stating she “feared for my life and my son’s life.” According to , Karine dropped the order in February 2023 shortly before the pair announced they’d reunited.
