'90 Day Fiancé' and '90 Day: The Other Way' star Shekinah Garner has been dating her Turkish fiancé, Sarper Güven, for years. Now he's finally made his way to the United States on a K-1 visa. Shekinah updates Parade on her life now.
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00:00I feel like I'm a pretty confident person.
00:02I know that I look good, and I know that I'm fit and healthy,
00:05so what someone else is going to say about my weight or the way that I look doesn't affect me.
00:15So now that Sarper is here in the U.S., how has he been acclimating?
00:20It's been a big process for him because it's just so different than Turkey.
00:25Being here in the U.S. is something that he never dreamed of.
00:28It's been hard for him, but I think he fits right in.
00:32I'm in Hollywood.
00:32There could be worse places that he's come to in the U.S.,
00:35but we're in Hollywood, so not too shabby.
00:38And I personally think he's doing great.
00:40We've seen in the past, you know, you kind of had set some of those boundaries around
00:44him not training women, like kind of setting up the way that he was allowed to work.
00:48And so now, obviously, he's here on a K-1 visa,
00:50and as we know, they're not allowed to work until a certain point.
00:53But how has it been financially?
00:55The last time we spoke, you mentioned that he covered a lot financially for the two of you.
00:59How has that been to navigate that dynamic?
01:02This waiting period that we're in right now,
01:05where Sarper can't work and can't earn a living,
01:08is challenging because I do feel like there is a lot of financial burden on me,
01:13which is something I didn't experience when I was in Turkey.
01:15He voted the bill for everything.
01:17In his mind and his culture, he does feel like that is the man's responsibility.
01:23So for him to not be able to earn an income right now,
01:27it's challenging his whole masculinity and making him feel
01:30like he might be a little less of a man.
01:32And he feels, you know, insecure about that.
01:35And I understand completely, and I never bring up the issue.
01:38Like, you know, when bills come due, I pay them, and I don't talk to him about them.
01:43The hardest thing for me with having Sarper living here in the U.S. is our change in dynamic.
01:49I don't know, I feel like I kind of had to step into more of a masculine role
01:52with him being here in the U.S. because this is my world,
01:55and he's entering it, and I'm having to tell him this is what we do here.
01:59Now that you're both here in the U.S., your daughter is obviously here as well.
02:04I'm wondering what the relationship is like between Sarper and your daughter.
02:07You guys are going to have to wait and see what happens with that.
02:10But that was one of the biggest things that had to happen for me
02:14before I could, you know, go forward with our relationship.
02:18You know, transitioning from an engagement into a marriage,
02:21he needed to meet my daughter, and there needed to be a relationship that developed there.
02:26It did not come without its challenges.
02:28You'll see what those were coming up in this season.
02:31It's something that I think takes time to develop.
02:34I feel like it was so much easier when she was little.
02:36Like, I feel like little kids love everyone, and they just are more open.
02:40And she's 17 now, and you know, she knows a lot more about relationships,
02:46and she's a lot more skeptical.
02:47So Sarper definitely has his work cut out for him when it comes to building that relationship.
02:54But it is important to him and me, for sure.
02:57And I think it's important to her, too.
02:59Does Sarper want to take on the stepfather role?
03:01Like, is that his goal?
03:02Does he want to be called dad?
03:04Does he have any sort of name in mind, anything like that?
03:07My daughter has a great father, and I was never looking for a dad for her.
03:12She always had a dad, you know?
03:15And I don't really think that Sarper was ever looking to be her stepdad.
03:21We kind of like to call him a bonus dad, you know?
03:24He's an adult male figure that's there for her, that loves her mom,
03:27that's showing her what a healthy relationship looks like.
03:30And there, you know, he's told her,
03:33I'm always here for you if you feel like you have questions about boys,
03:36or if there's something that you don't feel comfortable going to your mom about,
03:39you know, come to me, you know?
03:41And I think that that's so nice.
03:42Like, he wants to be there to give advice.
03:45I think that he'll fit into that role perfectly.
03:47We've gotten the teaser trailer that came out.
03:50It seems like maybe perhaps one of your,
03:51I don't know if he's an ex-boyfriend, an ex-lover of Sarper.
03:53Oh, Dan?
03:54No, he's just a friend.
03:55He likes to pretend like there was something, but there was never.
03:58But he even starred in some drama.
04:01So it seems like he wanted to come for you,
04:03and he's like, I'm better for you than Sarper.
04:05How did you feel about that?
04:06Dan is a person in my life that I have always just thought of as a friend.
04:12And there were times when, you know, I was single,
04:16and I was thinking, why do I keep dating all of these a**holes?
04:19You know, Dan's always been there.
04:21He's a good guy.
04:22He's so sweet.
04:23And I've given him a shot here and there.
04:25Like, okay, let's go on a date.
04:27Like, I'll try to go on a date in a romantic sense with Dan and see how I feel.
04:32And I never felt any kind of way during the day.
04:35I just felt like he's still my friend.
04:36So for him to come at Sarper and, you know,
04:40kind of have this approach of, like, I still think I'm better for her,
04:43you know, that just goes back to, like, the first season when I was, like,
04:46about to even leave to Turkey, and he was telling me the same thing.
04:50It's like, nothing has changed.
04:51So I can't wait to see that all come to fruition.
04:55So you did recently, you posted on your Instagram,
04:57you had some recent surgeries, you had some work done to your face.
05:01Did Sarper have any say in the additional work that you had done?
05:05Sarper actually really encouraged me to have all of my facial fillers dissolved,
05:09which I started the process of doing last year.
05:13And I did not really realize what that was going to entail.
05:17And what actually happened as a result of dissolving my facial fillers
05:20was I had a lot of loose skin and wrinkling and hollows, actually.
05:24So, like, my under eyes got super hollowed out,
05:27and I just felt like I needed, you know, this all filled in and tightened up.
05:32So I got fat transfer, and it wasn't successful.
05:36I did it, like, 10 days before the tell-all last year.
05:39So they had to underfill instead of overfill, which they usually do.
05:42And so I went in for a lift.
05:45So they repositioned my cheeks up to fill in these hollows.
05:48So it was a facelift, but it was mainly to treat the under eye area.
05:54And I'm so glad that I did it because now I'm filler-free,
05:57except for my lips, which I'll keep.
05:59But I just am so over the filler fad.
06:01Like, that is such a...
06:03That's such a 2000...
06:06I think it started, like, in the mid-2000s,
06:08and it, like, really became this crazy thing
06:10where people were getting super overfilled.
06:13And now we're going back to, like, a more natural look, which I like.
06:17Early on in your 90-day tenure,
06:18we did see that Sarper was tracking your weight a lot,
06:21and he was kind of making a lot of comments about your body.
06:24Has that continued to be the case,
06:25or have you guys kind of stopped that conversation?
06:28My weight has always pretty much been the same throughout my whole life.
06:32I've always been pretty lean.
06:34I've always loved working out.
06:35And it's always been hard for me to gain weight.
06:37So when he was giving me, you know, little critiques about my weight,
06:42I was actually working with a trainer,
06:45a bodybuilder trainer at the time,
06:47who was having me bulk up and put on a lot of weight to build muscle.
06:51And so I was the biggest I'd ever been.
06:53I was, like, the heaviest,
06:54but I felt like my clothes fit the same.
06:56I just had a lot more muscle.
06:57So I stopped lifting so heavy,
07:00and I kept eating a high-protein, low-carb, no-sugar diet.
07:04And, you know, I just kind of stay the same with my weight.
07:08That's crazy.
07:13Do you want me to weigh you?
07:15Do I want you to weigh me?
07:16Yeah.
07:16He doesn't really care that much.
07:18I think he was just asserting himself as, like,
07:20this dominant person in my life who knows a lot about fitness.
07:23You know, that was, like, his angle at the time.
07:25Did it, like, hurt your feelings, though,
07:27when he was kind of making those comments?
07:28Or were you like, eh, it's whatever?
07:30I feel like I'm a pretty confident person.
07:32And I know that I look good.
07:34And I know that I'm fit and healthy.
07:35So, like, what someone else is going to say about my weight
07:38or the way that I look doesn't affect me really at all.
07:41So I, of course, cared what he thought.
07:44But him thinking that I needed to lose weight,
07:46no, it didn't hurt my feelings.
07:48Because I could care less at the end of the day.
07:51Well, something that I think was kind of glossed over
07:53in the whole series is that you grew up Amish.
07:56Is that right?
07:57I grew up in the Amish lifestyle because, yeah,
08:01because we lived in Tennessee.
08:03And we lived, you know, surrounded by Amish communities.
08:06My parents grew this huge, like, love for the Amish.
08:10They adopted their lifestyle.
08:12They started to dress like them,
08:14a five-person Amish family that lived with us
08:16in our house for years.
08:18And they taught us how to live and work and worship
08:22and, you know, do everything like Amish.
08:24And so I like to kind of say my parents cosplay the Amish
08:29because it was like, they weren't really Amish, you know.
08:32But we had to grow up living like them
08:35and dressing like them.
08:36And that was something I resented so much
08:38when I became a teenager.
08:39I was like, this is not normal.
08:41I actually hate it.
08:42I want to wear jeans and I can't.
08:44And I wanted to wear makeup and jewelry.
08:47Wow. So, I mean, that, how do you think
08:48that has impacted you today?
08:50That's a lot of change
08:52compared to your life back then growing up.
08:54I think my upbringing does impact, you know,
08:57who I am today.
08:58I mean, how could it not?
09:00That was like such a huge chunk of my life.
09:03I had no freedom and no choice as to how I looked.
09:06So I think that might contribute to why
09:09me controlling my appearance is so important to me now.
09:11And I have five younger sisters
09:14and they're all tattoo artists.
09:16They're covered in tattoos.
09:17That probably has to do with our upbringing too.
09:20We all really, there was a big emphasis
09:22put on our appearance all growing up by our parents.
09:26And, you know, that kind of backfired on them
09:28because now our appearance is like super glamorous
09:30or very tattooed up or whatever.
09:32So, you know, that emphasis on appearance
09:35has always been there throughout my life.
09:37And I don't necessarily think it's the most healthy thing,
09:42but it's the way we were raised.