My Experience Marrying a Russian Mail-Order Bride

In December 1992 a good friend of mine - we’ll call him Bob - culminated 18 months of a pen-pal relationship with a Russian mail-order bride, when he agreed to meet the girl somewhere on the Polish border and bring her back to Italy with him. It was just “Phase I” of his plan. In Italy he would process the paperwork to get her a visa back to United States. And they’d all live happily ever after. That he’d already sent her in the neighborhood of $8,000.00 dollars up to that point, is just a coincidence. Anyway, for all I know he may still be waiting for her, because I don’t believe she ever showed up.

Bob may be an exception and not the rule, but I doubt it. There are probably hundreds of men - maybe more - who get bilked out of money or suckered into the false pretense of marriage with a Russian mail-order bride or a woman from one of a dozen other countries. Now there may well be dozens of Russian women who actually want to marry a well-to-do westerner, but statistics don’t bear this out. The majority of women who pose as mail-order brides could probably care less about developing a meaningful relationship. Many of these girls are looking for a green card or at the very least searching for an opportunity to bring the rest of their extended families back to the United States, Canada or Australia.

Mail-order brides were big business back in the 18th and 19th century. Lots of women not - not just the Russian ones - were swayed to come to the United States only to find themselves in a covered wagon heading out to the still-undiscovered West. The locations may have changed a bit over the last 200 years but the business proposition is still as valid (well, as valid as a mail order contract can be anyway) as it was at the turn-of-the-century.