Ben Rathbun of 90 Day Fiancé fame has died, his family has revealed. He was 55 years old.
Rathbun was surrounded by family at home in Greencastle, Indiana, when he died Monday, TMZ reported.
He had been diagnosed with stage four stomach cancer at the end of 2024, according to the outlet. Rathbun starred on season five of the hit TLC show, which follows individuals who have obtained visas to travel to the U.S. to marry their partners.
Rathbun appeared with then-girlfriend Mahogany Roca — 30 years Rathbun’s junior — on season 5 of the TLC reality show 90 Day Fiance: Before the 90 Days, which aired in 2021.
Roca was reportedly by Rathbun’s side when he died.
When he met Roca online, Rathbun was a divorced father of four — including a daughter the same age as Roca. The couple dated for three months before joining the show, according to In Touch. His friends and family were concerned he was being catfished, as Roca was from Peru and wouldn’t video chat with him in the early days of their relationship. But the couple eventually met in Peru, announced their engagement in August 2022, and got married in 2023.
“Our civil ceremony was just brilliant, I could not believe how beautiful it was,” Rathbun said during a February 2024 episode of the spinoff show 90 Day Diaries, In Touch reported. “But we are still planning on having a religious ceremony.”
Rathbun said at the time he and Roca were working to “build trust” with one another.
“We’re just going through a really difficult transition. I’ve gone about six months without a really good job and bills have been piling up, of course,” he said. “Things are extremely tight now and I’m doing everything I can right now to pay all the bills and for my next trip to Peru.”
Rathbun, a pastor and former executive director of the Michigan Lupus Foundation, was fired from that job in 2022 following an arrest for a probation violation related to a 2020 driving under the influence charge.
He spoke out in 2022 to set the record straight on both accounts.
“When the public, including the board members of my charity, first heard of my arrest, [it was] falsely reported that I had been picked up late at night for drunk driving,” he told In Touch at the time. “While the truth was far less dramatic, the damage had been done.”
“But still, I had committed a crime and put myself and others in danger,” he explained. “And … I had hid it from them and even my family.”
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