NEW BALL AND CHAIN

REALITY TV star Tiger King Joe Exotic has married fellow bandiet Jorge Flores Maldonado. 

The 62-year-old reality star - who is currently serving a 21-year prison sentence after being found guilty of a murder-for-hire plot against rival Carole Baskin - found love behind bars with Jorge and confirmed on Tuesday that they have now tied the knot.

He wrote on X: “Never been more proud of someone. Meet my husband Jorge Flores Maldonado.”

The verliefde tronkvoels met while incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center in Fort Worth, Texas, USA. 

According to Fox News, Jorge had been transferred from the South Texas ICE Processing Center in Pearsall, Texas, after entering the United States illegally from Mexico.

Joe is hoping that making their union official would give his partner a reason not to be deported back to his home country, and that he was ready to follow him to South America if need be.

Joe told RadarOnline.com: “Whether it helps his immigration status or not, we love each other enough to get married. We even got tattooed matching wedding bands already on.

“What it would do is, it would assure him, and it would show the court, that he has a little bit of financial stability to stay in America.

“It’s gonna look better for his asylum case to be married. We’re just hoping that the prison will allow us to… stay in the same prison.”

He told the outlet that if he can’t get help from the government to “keep him here”, then “I guess I’m going to Mexico.”

Announcing their engagement in October last year, Joe described his fiancé as "so amazing" and admitted he wished he had "met him long" before.

Joe shared a photo of them together on his X account and wrote: "Meet Jorge Marquez he is 33. He is so amazing and is from Mexico.

“Now, the quest of getting married in prison and getting him asylum or we be leaving America when we both get out. Either way, I wish I would have met him long ago.”

The former zoo keeper seemed hopeful at the time that this relationship will turn out better than his previous marriages to Dillon Passage, who he finalised his divorce from in January 2023, and Travis Maldonado, who died in 2017.

He said: “We love each other very much, spend every minute of the day together.

“I’ve been through some s*** in my days. I buried two husbands, the third one ran off with 2.6 million bucks from Netflix and left my a** here, but Jorge is a very amazing young man.”