I’m the daughter of a mail-order bride — here’s what I wish people knew

Katya as a bridesmaid at a wedding next to a picture of her mother (Picture: Katya Suvorova)

The year was 1997 and Katya Suvorova’s mother Yulia was getting ready to flee Moscow.

Yulia had ties to the mafia and needed to leave Russia, but after divorcing Katya’s father, her options were limited. So, she submitted herself for a mail-order bride catalogue, in the hopes she’d catch a man’s eye.

What ensued was decades of failed marriages, and trauma for Katya, who was along for the ride as her mother tried desperately to get their green cards which would afford them permanent residence in the US.

‘There’s a bunch of different sites now if you type in Russian women on Google, and you’ll get RussianBrides.com or Rose Brides, but before the internet, it was just a magazine,’ author Katya, now 33, tells Metro.

‘Women would go to a brokerage and ask to be put in the magazine and then men could request the catalogue. They would flip through, find a woman they liked, and ask the brokerage for that woman’s information.

‘That’s how they did it in the 90s.’

At the time, there were roughly 10,000 mail-order marriages each year, with around 4,000 of these involving US men, according to the Center for Immigration Studies.

Katya struggled with her mother’s fleeting marriages growing up in America (Picture: Katya Suvorova) Yulia’s picture from her mail-order bride catalogue (Picture: Katya Suvorova)

Some ladies would even pay to have their photos towards the front of the catalogue in an attempt to be chosen, and when Katya was 17, living in Houston, she stumbled on her mother’s catalogue while she was cleaning out their garage.

‘She had her photo and just a very small description saying “I’m looking for a family and eternal love”,’ Katya recalls.

But, the author says many women attempted to appeal to men by writing ‘anti-feminist’ bios in their advert. ‘Many read “I want to serve my husband” or “I just want to be the best wife I can be” – they never said I want to be a career woman, it was always trad-wife,’ she adds.

‘These women aren’t dumb, they know what men want and why they aren’t looking for brides in their own countries.’

The power dynamic of the mail-order marriage

While Katya’s mother has been tight-lipped with her daughter about her experience as a mail-order bride, Katya remembers much of what happened throughout her childhood.

‘This guy called Joe answered her ad and said “I’ll get you across the US border, and we’ll get a marriage visa when you get here”,’ she says.

For her mother, this was the dream. She’d watched the likes of Baywatch and all the 90s shows which ‘depicted this really beautiful America’. Yulia believed she’d be safe there with Katya, but it didn’t go to plan.

Katya with one of her stepdads when she was growing up (Picture: Katya Suvorova)

Things went south with Joe quickly, and their plans to get married and live with him in California fell apart for reasons unknown, but Katya suspects it was because he wasn’t going to apply for their green card.

‘It’s up to the men to apply and give that information, and oftentimes they withhold that application so women aren’t documented and they’re scared,’ she explains. ‘It’s a power move, especially if they’re not rich, and they hold it above women’s heads.’

So, Yulia took Katya to Nevada where she found her second husband Jerry in a bar, and married him in the late 90s. Katya claims he was abusive to her when she was five, and would lock her in cupboards when she cried.

‘It was such a crazy way to treat a child, but my mum said we needed to stay with him until we got our green cards,’ she says. ‘He held it over our head and it didn’t happen, so she decided we had to get out of there.

‘That dehumanised me.’

They’d moved to Houston with Jerry for his work, so Yulia left him and once again put an advert in the paper saying ‘I’m a Russian woman looking for a husband’.

‘She knew a lot of men had a fetish for women who grew up in the USSR behind the Iron Curtain, and it worked, she found my stepdad Chris that way,’ Katya explains.

Yulia immediately fell pregnant with Katya’s sister, Masha, and while Chris was ‘nice at first’ it turned out to be another abusive marriage.

‘He wouldn’t apply for our documents either, so that marriage lasted about two years,’ she adds. ‘After that, my mum dated around for a while and then she met her last ex-husband Adam, who finally applied for our green card.

‘I became documented, my mum became documented, through him, he didn’t hold that over my mum’s head. It was such a big relief, but mostly I felt thankful that my family wouldn’t be separated.’

Yulia’s marriage to Adam also ended and she hasn’t remarried since.

Katya grew up to be in a loving and happy relationship but no longer speaks to her mother (Picture: Katya Suvorova)

Katya doesn’t speak to her mother anymore, and hasn’t done for a few years, because she struggles to understand how Yulia could’ve left her in those situations, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t respect her.

‘I feel very awed by her that she was able to take attraction out of the equation because she married some really disgusting-looking men,’ Katya says. ‘She took herself out of the equation because she wanted to elevate us, but these men were scum of the earth.’

What I wish people knew about mail-order brides

Katya has now penned her experiences in her debut memoir Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter, available September 29. There’s one particular gripe she has with mail-order brides, and it’s how they’re perceived by others.

‘My entire life I grew up with people telling me my mother was “a Russian whore”, but that’s not what it is,’ she says. ‘Okay, these women could potentially get a better passport out of it, but what are the men getting out of it?

‘People always see it as the international bride taking advantage of this poor, generous American – but I’ve never seen a situation where it’s not a power dynamic.

‘I want people to treat these men who are buying these women with the same disdain they treat a woman who is trying to get out of a bad situation.’

Katya thinks the men ordering brides should be judged more heavily than the women offering themselves in a catalogue (Picture: Katya Suvorova) Ungrateful Immigrant Daughter will be available on September 29 (Picture: Katya Suvorova)

‘When women finally have the choice to marry who they want to marry and they want to better their position or status, they’re demonised for it. So what if a green card or visa is part of the attraction.’

But, there’s a silver-lining for Katya, and it means she’s able to experience relationships differently to her mother. She’s married to her partner of 14 years who she adores.

‘I went through a long journey of wondering what my mum putting herself in a catalogue meant for how people view me, but then I finally came to a place where I thought, because my mum made the decision to come here through a catalogue, I can marry for love.

‘She gave me that privilege.’

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