Ed “Big Ed” Brown revealed the breaking point in his engagement with ex-fiancée Liz Woods.
“I’ve known for a few months that it really wasn’t going to work and I wasn’t really happy,” Ed, 59, exclusively told Us Weekly while talking about 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?. “The taco pasta night where Liz kind of lost it like she’s done before, my sister had never seen that. [My sister] just gave me that look like, ‘Don’t do it.’”
He continued, “And what kept reiterating in my head was something my mom had said to me, ‘Go ahead and marry her, but you’ll be miserable for the rest of your life.’”
During the April 21 episode of 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After?, Liz recalled the on-again, off-again couple getting into an argument after Ed made taco pasta.
“Ed made dinner — taco pasta — but then Ryleigh’s dish was just way too spicy for her, and Ed pretty much told her to stop being a baby. I don’t appreciate that, and I called him out on it,” Liz said during a confessional, adding that Ed “attacked me back” and they began “arguing in front of his family.”
Ed told Us that the morning after their fight — which he dubbed “Pasta Gate” — he had a conversation with his sister and decided he wasn’t going to go through with the wedding.
“So I began texting the venue, telling them I need a refund. And at that same time, Liz was calling and I thought she was calling to apologize and she didn’t. And that’s when I knew. She’s like, ‘Oh, we have date night tonight.’ I’m like, ‘Well, don’t you want to talk about last night?’” he recalled. “And that’s kind of what we did. Both of us together, we never dealt with our problems.”
Ed noted that the twosome would “sweep [their problems] under the rug” and continue on with their life. He added, “We never learned how to deal with those issues. And that eventually led to me deciding that I didn’t want to go through with it.”
Ed, who got engaged to Liz in November 2021, admitted that he “definitely” has “regrets” in how he handled calling off the wedding.
“I didn’t realize, I thought I had told Liz, but I think I did, but she didn’t really hear me or she didn’t believe me. And it wasn’t until our officiant reached out to her and said, ‘Look, I’m really sorry.’ And that’s when it hit her a ton of bricks that it was over,” he said. “And I’d spoken to him a couple weeks later when I was in San Diego and he’s like, ‘Yeah, when she got the message she was uncontrollable.’ So that part really hurt.”
Ed said that he “wasn’t happy” with how Liz found out his decision to call off the nuptials, but he noted there’s “no good way” to tell her. Ed added, “So I just had to cut it off.”
90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After? airs on Sundays on TLC at 8 p.m. EST.
With reporting by Yana Grebenyuk