What Joe Exotic's Husbands Looked Like Before & After Marriage
Apr 07 2020
Netflix's Tiger King didn't just introduce the world to Joe Exotic, the notorious former animal park owner who's currently serving time for a murder-for-hire conviction. Viewers also met Exotic's husbands. The now-viral star, who is openly gay, has tied the knot multiple times over the years. However, at the time the bulk of the docu-series was filmed, he was in a relationship with John Finlay and Travis Maldonado. Both men met their eventual shared spouse when they were fairly young, and the three spent years together in a polygamous marriage.

Due to wild working conditions, alleged drug use, and the addition of many tattoos, both Finlay and Maldonado experienced changes when it came to their appearances, especially when you consider what they looked like when they first met Exotic compared to after they tied the knot with the now-infamous docu-series figure.

John Finlay met Joe Exotic in 2003 when the then-19-year-old was looking for work after graduating high school and answered a Craigslist ad. He wanted to be a carpenter at the time, but, according to The Daily Beast, quote, "jobs were scarce, and he didn't hesitate when, one day after applying, Joe hired him."

Finlay, who had a lot more hair and not nearly as many tattoos when he started working for Exotic, was living with a girlfriend initially, but eventually moved to the park where he began a relationship with his boss. During their time together, Finlay claims that Exotic introduced him to meth, which may or may not have caused him to lose many of his teeth. Additionally, the two lifted weights together to bulk up while Finlay got dozens of tattoos, including at least three dedicated to Exotic.

While Finlay went through noticeable physical changes during his relationship with Exotic, he's also gone through another more recent transformation.

Sadly, the same thing can't be said of Exotic's other husband, Travis Maldonado. We'll get to that in a minute.

Travis Maldonado was once, according to The Daily Beast, quote, "a handsome, six-foot-four-inch tall 20-year-old from Southern California." However, after leaving high school at 18, he became bored and started dabbling in drugs. In order to help him find a stable path, his father, Danny, gave him a thousand dollars to make his way to Joe Exotic's animal park in Oklahoma to find work. Sherry Peck, the girlfriend of Maldonado's father, told The Daily Beast:

"He thought he was having the chance of a lifetime. He didn't know he was walking into hell."

In October 2013, not even a month after Maldonado arrived at his new home, Exotic threw a wedding ceremony for himself; his husband, John Finlay; and Maldonado, who, quote, "seemed happy" at the time. Spending his days roaming the park while passing time by shooting the ground with a variety of guns and doing drugs, Maldonado's appearance didn't change very much from what he looked like before he married Exotic compared to afterward.

That was partly due to the fact that, after just a few years of living at the animal park, Maldonado was killed at the age of 23 when he accidentally shot himself with a pistol, another sad aspect of the Tiger King tale.

Although Joe Exotic was originally married to John Finlay and Travis Maldonado in Tiger King, he went on to marry Dillon Passage in 2017 following Maldonado's death. After meeting on the Grindr dating app when Passage was around 21 years old and struggling with drugs, the pair tied the knot just two weeks later, despite the fact that there was a significant age gap between the duo, 33 years to be exact. As viewers of the docu-series saw, Passage was the same kind of fresh-faced young man that Exotic had previously married.

The two are still together these days, even sticking it out as Exotic serves a 22-year sentence.

However, Passage is doing his best to keep the world updated on the status of their relationship by doing interviews with the likes of Andy Cohen and Variety. He's even scored himself a manager, so we might be seeing even more of Exotic's husband in the future, with a backwards baseball cap that seems to be his signature look.

#TigerKing #JoeExotic #JohnFinlay

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