Daughter Of A Mail-Order Bride Explains Her Mom's Many 'Requirements' Of Her Husbands
She never settled for less!
@suvorovawrites / TikTok / Schartsinn / Shutterstock A woman on TikTok is explaining her moms unconventional career as a mail-order bride and what rules she had in place.
To sum it up, a mail-order bride is a woman who lists herself in catalogs and is selected by a man for marriage. In the twentieth century, many women living in developing countries would participate in this to secure financial wealth from a husband who lived in a more developed nation.
Katya Suvorova, whose mother was living in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union, says that her mother listed herself as a mail-order bride after escaping the country and moving to the United States. She did this as a means to secure financial security for herself and her daughter.
The woman explained her mother’s many ‘requirements’ of her husbands as a mail-order bride.
When Katya’s mother advertised her services, she also listed requirements for her future husbands. In a TikTok video that has been viewed over 1 million times, she explained all of the rules she enforced for the men who wanted to marry her.
1. Nationality requirement.
“They were ranked by how powerful their passports were in the world,” Katya claimed.
2. Salary requirement.
She had to make sure that she was financially well off! Katya says her mother required her future spouses to earn a minimum of $250,000 annually.
3. Size of engagement ring.
“If she was gonna marry them, she had a requirement for the size of her diamond ring, which had to be over 3 carats,” she claims.
In a follow-up video, Katya reveals more of her mother’s requirements.
4. Expensive gifts.
The bride-to-be never settled for less and demanded that her spouses purchase her expensive gifts. “One time, one of my stepdads gave her a homemade picture frame with their photo in it, and my mom broke it,” Katya shares. “She was like, ‘what am I supposed to do with this?” She claims that her mother only wanted fur, jewelry and useful appliances. “My husband and I got a free car out of one of her relationships,” she adds.
5. Pay for education.
Katya’s mother also wanted the security of having her education paid for by her husband. “She went and got a Master’s degree with one of her husbands,” she shared. She also revealed that her mother’s spouses had to take care of and financially support her as well.
Katya shares that her mother was not always a mail-order bride. She married Katya’s father in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union. According to their daughter, they met “organically.” However, her mother fled to the U.S. without notifying her father when she felt that her financial status was at risk.
In time, her feelings about her position as a mail-order bride changed. Katya shares that her mother is now “ashamed” of her actions. She originally told her daughter that she was a model when she was younger, showing her a photo of her in a magazine. It was only when Katya was older that she finally put the pieces together.
“I found that same magazine when I was 16 and I realized that it wasn’t a fashion magazine. It was a catalog of women,” she says.
Mail-order bride or not, it is clear that Katya’s mother only wanted what was absolutely best for the life of her and her daughter in the United States, and she did whatever she could to ensure that.
Megan Quinn is a writer at YourTango who covers entertainment and news, self, love, and relationships.