Money can’t buy happiness. But can it buy true 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 contend with.
“I need a prenup. Signed,” Sean Lourdes tells his fiancée, Megan Thomas, on the show.
“Marriage is not a business agreement,” Thomas replies.
The NYC couple, who live in Trump Tower, are one of the main pairs on “Marrying Millions.” Thomas, 25, is a model and the daughter of a California elementary school teacher and firefighter. Lourdes, 36, is the heir to an international publishing conglomerate called Auge Media and claims to be worth $30 million.
(He also 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 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 before they met. 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 . . . That’s why he was sort of chasing me for a while,” 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 says one of their biggest struggles was getting their respective families on board with their relationship.
‘Money — it’s sad, but it does kind of dictate your life.’
Thomas remembers that 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 their partnership.
Meanwhile, Thomas’ family was plenty suspicious of Lourdes.
“I was the oldest guy Megan ever dated,” Lourdes says. “They just thought I wasn’t in it for the right reasons.”
One Thanksgiving, Thomas brought him to meet her parents and relatives for the first time, and most of them spent the holiday 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 Manhattan-based marriage and family therapist, says that nailing down a shared vision — of the life you want to live, of the family dynamic you want to have — 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 develop a clear sense of 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 the relationship, they’ve of course had their 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.