Buying the knot
The new show ‘Marr ying Millions’ reveals what happens when regular folks marry rich
M ONEY can’t buy happiness. But can it buy love?
That’s the question behind Lifetime’s new reality TV series, “Marrying Millions,” which debuts Wednesday and follows the lives of six couples with seriously mismatched incomes. Each episode tracks multiple pairs as they prepare for the big day — a stressful time for any partnership, with or without heaps of cash to deal with.
“I need a prenup,” Sean Lourdes tells fiancée Megan Thomas on the show.
“Marriage is not a business agreement,” Thomas replies.
The couple, who live in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, are one of the main pairs on the show. Thomas, 25, is a model and the daughter of an elementary school teacher and a firefighter. Lourdes, 36, is the heir to an international publishing company called Auge Media and claims to be worth $30 million. (He also co-runs the family’s Lourdes Foundation, a charity that made headlines in 2014 when the LA Times reported that, among other things, the foundation had not followed through on some of its proposed projects and struggled to pay back vendors. Lourdes attributes these issues to his “inexperience” at the time, stating, “There were a few bumps in the road . . . but everything was resolved immediately.”)
The lovers — who wouldn’t discuss their prenup, since it’s a plot point on the show — have been together for five years and have a 3 ½-year-old son, Sean Jr. They first connected when Thomas, then 18 and a student at UCLA, applied for a job at Lourdes’ company. Sean, then 29, was 15 minutes late to the meeting, so Thomas decided to leave. But after that, their paths kept crossing at work events in the LA area, and Lourdes decided to pursue Thomas romantically.
It took a year and a half, but eventually, Thomas gave in.
“I was intimidated by him,” Thomas tells The Post. “He had all these beautiful cars. He was always with celebrities.”
Their differences were apparent from their first date. “The first time we met, he sent an Uber Black for me,” says Thomas, referring to the ride-share service’s luxury option. “I was like, ‘What the heck is even Uber Black?’ ”
To this day, she still struggles with the opulence of their lifestyle.
“She gets a little overwhelmed,” Lourdes says. “She’s like, ‘Our whole vacation cost how much?’ It was six figures.”
It’s not all caviar and trips around the world, though.
“We’ve had to fight to get us to where we are today,” Lourdes says. “People assume the worst.”
The couple struggled to get their families on board with their relationship.
Thomas says Lourdes’ dad was wary of her — “He thought I was just another model or a flavor of the week for Sean” — and Lourdes says he “still honestly [doesn’t] know” what his dad thinks of the two of them.
Meanwhile, Thomas’ family was plenty suspicious of Lourdes.
“I was the oldest guy Megan ever dated,” Lourdes says. “They thought I wasn’t in it for the right reasons.”
When Thomas brought him home to meet her parents and relatives, they spent Thanksgiving dinner grilling him.
“They were just trying to find out . . . if I really was this playboy guy,” Lourdes says.
He says it took years for Thomas’ mom to finally welcome him into the family. But he doesn’t hold it against either of her parents: He remembers thinking early on, “If I had a kid, this is the family I want a kid with.”
Shira Etzion, a marriage and family therapist based in Manhattan, says that nailing down a shared vision of the life you want to live is key for couples with any difference in income.
“When two people are contributing to something,” Etzion says, they need to ask themselves: “What is the goal of the family?” That way, both partners can identify what they are bringing to the table. It’s “an illusion,” Etzion says, that the breadwinner necessarily contributes more — and a harmful one for a couple navigating imbalanced finances.
Even though Lourdes’ riches have caused some problems in their relationship, there have also been plenty of perks: He’s whisked Thomas away on fabulous getaways to Paris, Japan, Thailand and Bali. “Every day she says, ‘This is the best date ever,’ ” Lourdes says of their trips. “It makes me happy when she’s happy.”
“That’s what I love about Sean,” Thomas says. “He spent months and months finding the perfect ring for me. And he does that with every part of our lives.”
As someone who’s lived on two sides of fortune, Thomas says their partnership has been a real eye-opener.
“Money — it’s sad, but it does kind of dictate your life,” she says. Of course, she adds, “you can still have fun not having money.” But if you have it? “You definitely get to experience a whole new world.”
“Marrying Millions” premieres Wednesday at 10 p.m. on Lifetime.