Couple’s quick courtship makes reality TV
SPRING HILL — Jason Hitch met Cassia Tavares on Facebook a couple of years ago.
He lived in Illinois; she lived in South America.
Jason Hitch and Cassia Tavares, who met on Facebook a couple of years ago, will appear on TLC’s “90 Day Fiance,” a series that follows international engaged couples.
They hit it off online, and in the spring of 2013, Hitch, 38, visited Curitiba, Brazil, to meet Tavares, 23, and her family.
Not only have the couple now decided to get married, but also they have agreed to have their lives chronicled on “90 Day Fiance,” a TLC “docu-series” that, according to the network, “follows the journeys of six international engaged couples who unite in America under a special U.S. visa.”
On the show, once a foreign fiance arrives in America, the couples has 90 days to get married. If they don’t, the visiting fiance must leave the country.
The first episode featuring Hitch, who now lives in Spring Hill, and Tavares airs at 9 p.m. tonight.
They are one of six couples who will be featured over 10 episodes this season, said Raul Rojas, a publicity manager for TLC.
Participating on the show was Hitch’s idea.
“I thought it could open up a few doors for us, since she does have modeling aspirations,” Hitch said. “Also, her course of study is journalism, so this could open doors for her with that, and it can drive traffic to anything I do online when it comes to selling.”
Through eBay, Hitch said he sells “a potpourri of items,” including parts for his beloved El Camino, Mercedes parts, baseball cards and items he finds at thrift stores.
“If I find a Monopoly game from the 1960s, I’ll buy it for $4 knowing that I can sell it for $40,” he said.
Tavares acknowledged that her life has undergone “a lot of changes” since meeting Hitch.
“I had to leave my college and friends and family,” including her mother, stepfather and two younger sisters, she said. “But I like it (in America). I can still go to college here and finish here. It’s good.”
Hitch and Tavares, who spoke in a telephone interview coordinated by TLC, both said they anticipate being judged harshly by some viewers.
“The TV show is complicated,” Tavares said. “People judge in 31 seconds and already have an opinion of you; that’s what I think is wrong.”
Hitch worries that people will think he chose a bride “from the back of a magazine.”
“We want to educate people as to the real process,” he said. “It hasn’t been an easy two-year journey of bureaucracy and paperwork.”
Information from TLC hints at some drama.
“Jason has very rigid views on relationships, while Cassia is a passionate and sometimes volatile person who expresses her feelings bluntly,” reads a synopsis of the couple. “They will both struggle to find middle ground in their relationship.”
Unlike some families that have appeared on “90 Day Fiance,” Hitch said his family has not been skeptical of his choices or his fiancee’s motives.
“I’m blessed with a small family that’s not that judgmental,” he said. “My brother and father have known about all this, and my father has known Cassia since day one.
“This isn’t a story about a poor innocent girl with no shoes and water who wants to come to America.”
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