A Native American woman who will finally move to be with her UK husband eight years after meeting online said she was prompted to leave the US after Donald Trump became president for a second time.
Brittni Roberts, 34, from California, and her husband Ross, 31, based in Amesbury, Wiltshire, met on the online platform Discord in 2017 and became close friends before their friendship blossomed into romance, and they began a long-distance relationship in 2020.
The couple lived their lives apart, sharing meals – and even sleeping – over phone calls.
During their second in-person meeting in the summer of 2023, Ross proposed and the couple married on a Native American campground in January 2024.
The couple had originally been planning to move to California but found the process “frustrating” following the inauguration of Mr Trump, and they are now raising funds for a visa so Brittni can move to the UK.
So far, the couple have raised more than £3,600 for Brittni – more than a third of the way towards their goal of £10,000, which would cover £1,800 for the visa, £1,000 fast-track fee and around £3,000 NHS surcharge as well as travel and moving costs.
Ross, a full-time carer for his mother, told PA Real Life: “It was the fear of the unknown moving forward with the political climate that kind of sprung me into action to try and get her here as quickly as possible.
“I would love for her to be here, just so we can be together – but also I’m worried about her safety, and I know that a lot of people would disagree with the fact that she might be in an unsafe position … it’s so uncertain to me, that I’d like to get her here as quickly as possible.”
Brittni, an educator at a primary school, added: “I’m not necessarily afraid, but I can see where the path that the United States government is taking could lead us.
“I participate a lot in things that have to do with my heritage and my culture, and I don’t want to have to hide that I’m a Native American, like out of fear or out of obligation.”
The couple had been excited to move in together in California but their plans were scuppered after Mr Trump was elected.
Brittni explained: “Barring the actual political turmoil that’s going on, the factual part about it is that despite the US trying to make the target illegal immigrants, it has unfortunately impacted people who are trying to come to the country legally.”
She said petitions for moving to the US legally were taking too long for the couple to wait, and was the “biggest factor” in Brittni moving to the UK.
She added that she did not “want to have kids here under everything that’s changing” and that she was at risk of losing her job as she worked for a grant-funded position at the school amid Mr Trump’s plans to abolish the Department of Education.
Living together had been their “big hurdle,” Brittni said.
“It’s the one thing that we’ve been working towards in the five years that we’ve been together and the year that we’ve been married,” she said.
The couple met on a Discord server for helping people to stream themselves playing video games online in 2017 and began a long-distance relationship just before the Covid-19 pandemic.
They frequently slept, ate and went about their lives with each other on the phone, with their longest phone call lasting 101 hours.
Ross said: “It’s not so much that we’re constantly talking, it’s kind of a proxy for being in the same room together, so we’re always doing our own thing.
“We might be watching movies together, but we might just be doing completely separate things, and we’re just on the phone, and with the time difference, sometimes it’ll be she’s asleep, and I’m doing stuff during the day, and then I’ll be asleep, and she’s awake doing something, just because of the time difference.”
The couple met for the first time in person in 2021, after more than a year of dating, when Ross got on a flight for the first time to California.
“As soon as I picked him up from the airport, we were comfortable, we were chatting, and from the airport to where I live is about a two-hour drive, so we had time in the car to talk and hold hands and stop for gas and chit-chat, and it was like we’d never been separated,” Brittni said.
Ross said even before he started dating Brittni he “knew he was going to marry her” and he proposed after only meeting her in person for a second time, at Wrynose Pass in the Lake District.
“We were in this beautiful countryside, there was nobody else around. We were by this little creek, and it was just beautiful and gorgeous,” Brittni said.
“He said, ‘look at that over there’ and I turned around and he’s getting down on one knee, and we both just cried. It was perfect.”
The couple got married with a “beautiful” hand-fasting ceremony at Wedding Rock in Sue-meg State Park in California in January 2024, with just Brittni’s dad and step-mother in attendance.
They were preparing for Ross to move to California when Mr Trump was elected and their plans changed – the couple have lived out their marriage across continents.
Brittni said: “I work in education for elementary-school children, and they are absolutely fascinated by the fact that my husband lives in another country and has an accent and all that.”
There have been “a lot of setbacks” to raising the funds for a visa but Ross said it was the only way he could make the move happen.
“I’m not typically a person that asks for people to help. I’ll just try and find a way, but I had to sort of set my pride aside so that my wife can be safe,” he said.
Looking to a possible future together in person, Brittni said: “I feel like I could take a deep breath and finally start our lives together.”
To find out more about Ross and Brittni’s fundraiser, visit www.gofundme.com/f/my-wife-and-i-to-live-together-finally.
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