There's a lot to know about Welcome to Plathville. The TLC show follows the lives of Barry and
Kim Plath, along with their nine kids. With a family that big, there's bound to be some drama.
Here's the untold truth of the TLC reality show Welcome to Plathville.
You don't have to be a TLC fanatic to recognize the similarities between Welcome to Plathville's
Plath family and the Duggar family of 19 Kids and Counting. While there's little
evidence to prove the two families pal around, social media posts from a mutual family friend
seem to reveal that the Plaths and Duggars have at least become acquainted with one another.
As In Touch reported, a woman by the name of Nurie Rodrigues was in Hosanna Plath's wedding
party when she married her now-husband, Timothy Noble, in 2019. Nurie Rodrigues is the daughter
of David and Jill Noyes Rodrigues — and, incidentally, Anna Duggar's younger brother,
Nathan Keller, was courting her at the time of Hosanna's wedding. The Rodrigues family
posted a photo of Hosannah and Nurie at the former's wedding to Instagram, captioning it,
"What an HONOR it was for Nurie to be asked to be a part of this
special day as a bridesmaid! She even caught the bouquet!"
From the very first episode of Welcome to Plathville, it's clear that Moriah Plath is the
black sheep of the family. When asked to describe their teenage daughter, Barry and Kim Plath paused
and stared at one another before Kim urged her husband to tackle the question. As Barry put it:
"You know, Moriah can be opinionated."
However, while Moriah doesn't always agree with her parents' stances on what a proper
lifestyle should look like, she does believe that she's different from the rest of her family.
The difference is noticeable to viewers,
too, as Moriah seems infinitely more at ease on-camera than the majority of her siblings.
"So, Lydia, what do you like to do for fun?"
"Well...I’m not sure."
Of course, this is likely due to the fact that Welcome to Plathville isn't Moriah's
first time in front of the camera. As revealed on the Plath family's website, Moriah made her acting
debut in a 2018 short film called You Should Be There. The film, which can be viewed on Vimeo,
features Moriah as Brittany - a troubled daughter who has a strained relationship with her father.
In 2008, Barry and Kim Plath suffered every parent's worst nightmare when
their 17-month-old son, Joshua, was killed. The death of a child is tragic enough on its own,
but the Plaths' tragedy was made infinitely worse by the circumstances surrounding Joshua's death.
On the Plath family website, Kim Plath went into detail about the day Joshua died,
explaining that she was transplanting fruit trees in the family Suburban,
with their eighth child, Joshua, in tow. She continued, writing:
"I looked for our 17-month-old Joshua, saw that he was away from the vehicle, then pulled forward
to get the next tree. In a panic, I realized what had happened. I ran over our Joshua."
"We’re all just praying, crying. And, um, they...the lady, she took him to the ambulance,
and she came back and she said 'I'm sorry'."
Understandably, the following months were dark times for Kim. She wrote:
"I was gone. Unavailable for conversations or reality.
If someone said Joshua's name, I had to leave the room."
Fortunately, according to Kim,
God "healed" her on Mother's Day a year after Joshua's passing. Kim wrote:
"I can't explain it, other than [God] re-wrote the bad coding in my brain."
While she might look the part, Olivia Plath is not an original member of the Plath family.
Instead, the photographer married the family's eldest son,
Ethan Plath, in 2018. However, considering how natural she and Ethan seem together,
one might assume Olivia has known the Plaths for much longer than just a couple of years.
And, according to an old blog post authored by Olivia, one would be correct.
In an October 2015 blog entry titled "Meet the Plath Family" on her own family's blog,
Olivia gushed about the people that would one day become her in-laws.
Calling the Plaths "[her] people," she wrote:
"We have found all sorts of people, but never ones like these people. We are so blessed to serve a
God who deeply cares about each one of us and who orchestrates things for our good. [...] Praise
the Lord for a week of fellowship with like-minded believers and dear friends!"
It's hard to deny the adorable relationship Ethan and Olivia Plath share. The two are clearly head
over heels for one another, often breaking out in giggles during every conversation.
Of course, as viewers of the show know, their marriage was a point of much contention within
the Plath family. Olivia is determined for herself and for Ethan to fully break away from
his family's strict lifestyle, and to create a life with her husband that is entirely their own.
However, while Ethan was still living under the watchful eyes of his parents,
he and Olivia were falling in love the old-fashioned way — through snail mail.
On their wedding website, Ethan and Olivia explained that they started
exchanging letters and phone calls in December 2016. The couple revealed that:
"Living in different states made getting to know each other more intentional because
time spent on the phone and writing letters was limited due to work schedules, etc.."
While Olivia Plath was raised in a religious family, she revealed on the show’s first
episode that her upbringing was far less strict than that of her husband, Ethan.
According to social media posts Olivia allegedly made
before Welcome to Plathville made its TLC debut,
she's strongly against the staunchly rule-abiding religious culture in which her husband was raised.
In a June 2019 Facebook post shared by a fan on an online message board, Olivia reportedly wrote:
"I hate the fundamentalist movement, [and] the legalistic approach to Christianity.
It takes a beautiful and completely personal relationship and turns it into a list of rules
or a box to be checked where everyone looks the same and talks like theological robots."
On Welcome to Plathville, the relationship between Olivia Plath and her husband's younger
sister Moriah Plath is quite divisive. Olivia, a photographer who often travels for her work,
has seemingly taken Moriah under her wing - hoping to expose her to new experiences from
which her conservative, religious parents would rather shelter her.
"We have the right to parent our children the way we decide to parent our children."
In one episode, Olivia is thrilled when Moriah finally obtains permission from
her parents to accompany Olivia on a work trip to San Francisco. However, the excitement is
overshadowed by mother Kim Plath's reluctance. Olivia explained the tense situation to People:
"When I approached Kim about it she was very hesitant, because they don't trust me and they
don't trust Moriah. They know I have different values and different priorities than them."
However, don't expect Kim's overarching attitude to get
in the way of Olivia and Moriah's friendship.
In an August 2019 Instagram post featuring a photo of herself and Moriah, Olivia wrote:
"We've walked through fire and found a solace in each other."
Unlike shows like The Little Couple, I Am Jazz, and OutDaughtered,
Welcome to Plathville hasn't been around long enough for viewers to
truly feel like they know the Plath family members on a personal level.
Still, it's easy to see that Moriah Plath is sort of the odd one out in the family.
Describing their sister on the show, Hosanna and Lydia Plath giggled, saying:
"Moriah's preoccupied with listening to music and doing her makeup."
Kim Plath, Moriah's mother, even said she had "lost control of Moriah."
In an October 2019 Instagram post, Moriah opened up to fans of the show about some of
her personal struggles, many of which had been speculated about since the show's premiere.
"I tried to hide it so long but at some point it became very clear to everyone except me that
I was struggling with some things that are happening. Sometimes you have to go through
something that completely destroys you in order to figure out who you really are."
Welcome to Plathville definitely doesn't give the impression that Kim Plath,
the matriarch of the Plath family, approves of Ethan Plath's marriage to his wife, Olivia.
However, fans will likely be surprised to learn that Kim Plath was allegedly the
one who first encouraged her son's relationship with his future wife.
According to blogger/vlogger Katie Joy from Without a Crystal Ball, who said she spoke
with Olivia Plath on the phone, Olivia reportedly revealed that Kim was enchanted with Olivia upon
first meeting her, and she didn't shy away from expressing her desire for Ethan and Olivia to get
together. As Katie Joy revealed, Olivia reportedly shared that Kim even encouraged her to join the
Plath family band after hearing her sing, and she said the two initially got along pretty well.
Following Welcome to Plathville's premiere, Ethan Plath quickly became the unlikely hero
of the reality show. The eldest Plath child, Ethan was the first to leave
his parents' farm and make a life of his own with his wife, Olivia. Since the show’s debut,
fans were delighted over Ethan's excitement at watching Friends for the first time, as well
as the hilarious video Olivia Plath recorded of her husband trying his very first soda.
"This is my first Coke.
That’s really good."
Along with his friendly demeanor and blonde hair,
the permanent smile plastered on Ethan's face has even drawn comparisons to the
plucky but conservative Kenneth Parcell from Tina Fey's 30 Rock.
"So much of television is really not fit for children or Christians or the elderly."
However, it's not all sunshine and roses for Ethan. According to blogger Katie Joy from
Without a Crystal Ball, who reportedly spoke with Ethan and Olivia Plath,
the eldest Plath sibling reportedly doesn't have a relationship with his mother, Kim Plath.
When asked for the reason behind his estranged relationship with his mom, Ethan allegedly said:
"She's selfish, she's stubborn, and she doesn't look out for anyone but herself."
During the Season 1 finale, after a full season of friction between
Olivia and the Plath parents over Olivia’s relationship with Moriah,
Moriah revealed that Olivia had given her a plane ticket to Minnesota so the Plath
daughter could help her photograph a wedding. However, as Moriah explained in the episode,
the plane ticket was only one-way - which seemed to hint that Moriah might stay in Minnesota.
Kim and Barry Plath appeared shocked by the revelation,
leading some fans to criticize Olivia for seemingly going behind her in-laws' backs and
stealing their daughter away while she was still under their roof. However, according to Olivia,
fans shouldn't believe everything they see on TV. Olivia tweeted on December 11, 2019:
"I'd NEVER buy a plane ticket for a minor without asking their parents, regardless of how I feel
about said parents. I had permission. But I guess that's not a dramatic enough storyline."
During Welcome to Plathville's first season, it became clear that the close relationship
Ethan Plath's wife, Olivia, formed with her sister-in-law, Moriah Plath, had seemingly
inspired the free-spirited Plath daughter to seek freedom from her family's farm life in
rural Georgia. Unsurprisingly, this influence Olivia had in Moriah's life put even more of a
strain on her already rocky relationship with her super traditional in-laws, Barry and Kim Plath.
With all the drama, it's natural to wonder why Olivia even wanted to be a part of the
TLC reality series in the first place. However, according to the Welcome to Plathville star,
she felt forced into appearing on the show, saying in a December 2019 Instagram post:
"I made many mistakes during the filming of the show (the first one being allowing myself to be
manipulated into doing it by family). But until you've dealt with narcissist behavior, you have
no idea how easy it is to freak out and react in an effort to protect yourself and those you love."
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