90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days star David Murphey has explained why he proposed marriage to Lana with a fake engagement ring.
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Sunday night's episode of 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days' fourth season showed David, a 60-year-old from Las Vegas, NV, getting down on one knee at the airport and popping the question to Lana, a 27-year-old from Ukraine, before boarding his flight back to the United States.
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David said it cost him seven years and $100,000 to get Lana to say "yes" to a marriage proposal, but the self-declared "multi-millionaire" put an engagement ring on Lana's finger that wasn't a real diamond.
Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days' Season 4 Tell-All reunion ended up filming remotely during the first weekend of May, with cast members participating via videoconference.
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About ten hours of raw footage from the Season 4 reunion show subsequently leaked online, including several hours in which David was interviewed by Tell-All host Shaun Robinson and discussed his romance with Lana and their engagement.
"You talk about how much money you have and that spending $100,000 [to communicate on a dating website] is basically a drop in the bucket to you, so why didn't you get Lana a real diamond ring?" Shaun asked David during the Tell-All.
David initially replied by saying, "We can't talk about that," apparently believing his answer had to do with how 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days' fourth season was edited.
Shaun, however, pressed David to talk about it.
"Lana got a prop. She wanted to pick out the ring she wanted to wear, and I accept that, that she wants to pick out her own ring and her own diamond," David explained.
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"So when I went to the jeweler -- who's a friend of mine -- and went to buy a ring. I didn't know her ring size, because Lana didn't know her ring size. She doesn't wear any rings; she doesn't have anything. [The jeweler] said, 'Do not buy a diamond ring you're going to resize."
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David continued, "So, I said, 'Well, then what am I going to do? I have to go there with something.' So that's when I said, 'I want less than a diamond.' Because he said, 'As soon as you buy this ring -- you're looking at this ring here and it costs $10,000 -- as soon as you buy this ring, it's going to depreciate by half [to $5,000] as soon as you walk out this door.'"
That's apparently when David decided he should buy a temporary engagement ring for Lana.
"I'm not going to buy a real diamond for a prop that's not the one she's going to wear," David told Shaun. "She's going to pick out her own ring, and she hasn't picked it out yet."
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Shaun asked David why Lana has essentially been dragging her feet on picking out a ring, and David responded, "Because we weren't together to pick it out."
"I should [have made] two trips over [to Ukraine] by now, but I can't travel," he elaborated. "I can't go over there and see her. Her country is locked down [due to coronavirus]."
After listening to David's exchange with Shaun, David's fellow 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days co-star Ed Brown noted he had been in a similar situation before he traveled overseas to visit Rosemarie Vega and he simply had Rose visit a local jewelry and get her finger sized.
"I [said], 'Go into a jewelry store -- go into any jewelry store and they will ring size you,'" Ed told David, explaining he spent $2,000 on his engagement ring for Rose.
"Dude, I don't know man... I think the website's a prop, I think the ring's a prop, and I'm sorry I think this whole relationship for you -- and I feel bad for you -- is a prop. I'm sorry," Ed continued.
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"And I'm not a millionaire dude. I'm sorry I don't have as much money as you -- $2,000, that's a lot of money for me. But I was willing to risk it, because I didn't want to go down there and give her a ring that was gonna fall off her finger. The jeweler was just like, 'Ask her what her ring size is.'"
However, David ignored Ed's suggestion that Lana should have easily been able to visit a local Ukrainian jeweler and determine her ring size.
"Yeah, and I asked her -- and she doesn't know her ring size because she's never worn a ring in her life," David replied.
"Oh please," Ed responded.
Although David got engaged on the season finale of 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days, he admitted Lana hasn't stopped using the dating website through which they had met.
David stated his preference would be for Lana to sign off the website and use her free time to talk to him, but he claimed Lana needs it to continue friendships since she's supposedly a shy and lonely girl in Kiev, Ukraine, where she currently lives with her sister.
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"All the girls in the Ukraine are on the websites. I know hundreds! I know 300 girls here that have gotten married that way and this is how it works," David insisted.
Also during the reunion, David said he doesn't care if Lana is using him for a Green Card to move to America.
And he claimed he's only given Lana about $500 a year in gifts and cash since they met.
As shown on 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days' fourth season, David flew to Ukraine with an engagement ring in his pocket, but Lana never showed up at the train station in Odessa to meet him.
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"I can't believe this is happening again. This is the fourth time that I've come to Ukraine to meet Lana, and this is the fourth time it hasn't happened," David said in a confessional.
"This one is different. There is no excuse for this one. The others had excuses, and logical excuses -- she had a medical operation and one time her brother died."
David couldn't get in contact with Lana afterward, so he decided to take a dangerous drive to her alleged home address in Pavlohrad, which was on the outskirts of a war zone. Lana had given David this address when he wanted to book them a cruise the previous year.
Once David arrived in Pavlohrad, David searched for Lana in local florist and candy shops. She also stood him up at a restaurant.
David therefore went straight to the source by driving to Lana's alleged address at an apartment building, but a man answered the door and said he had never seen Lana before.
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David wanted to be angry and quit his romance with Lana, but he admitted, "I know if she just writes to me and suddenly invites me into a chat, that's it!"
"That's all it takes and I'm hooked again," he added. "Everything inside me says I'm done with her, but I still love her, so I don't know what's going to happen. I have a lot of thinking to do."
Once David returned to the United States, he hired a private investigator to hopefully track Lana down and give him some information about the mysterious girl's whereabouts.
After conducting some research, the private investigator warned David it seemed like he was being scammed because Lana was on several dating websites, sharing the same pictures of herself under different names.
David didn't like the private investigator's findings and insisted someone could have stolen Lana's pictures and used them, and so David accused the PI of making stuff up and fired him.
After two or three weeks of not speaking to Lana, David said they finally reconnected and Lana opened up about what she was going through. Lana allegedly said she felt overwhelmed and "horrible" about what had happened and would make it up to David.
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David, however, was done waiting and believed in his heart Lana was "not scamming" him, so he decided to fly back to Ukraine, where Lana said she had moved in with her sister in Kiev. It marked David's fifth -- and hopefully final -- attempt to meet Lana.
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Lana put off meeting David for a couple of days, but she did eventually show up! The couple then went on a couple dates, which included a little kiss here or there.
"David is a very attractive man, better than what I expected," Lana told the cameras. "For today, I like everything in David, except his leather coat."
Lana, however, wanted to take things slowly, including the idea of an engagement and being physical with David.
But when David was about to leave Ukraine, he got down on one knee and popped the question in the airport, and Lana said, "Yes."
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David gushed about how he finally had his girl, proving all the doubters wrong, and Lana said she felt "very happy" to be engaged so David could start the K-1 visa paperwork.
Lana told the cameras she planned to leave the dating website, finally, and then move to Las Vegas to live with David.
"I don't know how I'll tell my family that I'm engaged because this all happened really unexpectedly and fast," Lana admitted.
Click here to read spoilers about David and Lana's relationship and whether they're still together and still engaged, including more Tell-All spoilers.
RELATED LINK: '90 DAY FIANCE: BEFORE THE 90 DAYS' COUPLES NOW: WHO IS STILL TOGETHER? WHO HAS SPLIT? WHERE ARE THEY NOW? (PHOTOS)
Want more 90 Day Fiance spoilers or couples updates? Click here to visit our 90 Day Fiance homepage!