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Many were introduced to the pair through a viral video featuring Jia as a bride at 400 lbs., along with snippets of her subsequent weight loss journey and amazing glow up through which Elijah patiently motivated and supported her. With nearly 1M views of that video alone, it has become a gateway into their endearing and at times, zany world of skits and montages that are creatively transparent, hilarious, and thought-provoking. Jia usually finds the ideas, and Elijah helps her execute them.
“If you notice, we don’t follow trends; we just go organically to us, to what we like. We’re not trying to be something we’re not to people. I’ll pick something, and if he likes it, we do it; it’s more of a team thing with us,” she shares. The Mirandas’ adoration for each other is infectious as they display goofy antics and PDA, making them one of the most-watched on the net. Whether it’s Elijah awkwardly trying to teach Jia how to merengue, Jia sashaying like a stallion, or somber clips acknowledging her insecurities despite her almost 150 lbs. weight loss, viewers look forward to what they’ll do next.
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Recognition from celebrities such as Viola Davis and Taraji P. Henson is mind-blowing for the couple, but being Instagram famous hasn’t overshadowed their humility.
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“I would never think that they would ever notice little people like us. The fact that these superstars and A-listers, across the board, are sharing our stuff is fantastic!” Elijah says with contagious excitement.
For Jia, it emboldened her decision to chuck the deuces to her 9-5 in property management and pursue entrepreneurship full-time.
“Right after I put in my two weeks and I left and went home, Viola Davis shared me right after that. That was confirmation for me that I did the right thing. If you look at my page, I put: ‘I quit my job.’ And on her page, the same day, she reposted [the merengue clip] right after I posted. It was like she inadvertently said ‘Baby, I got you, you did the right thing,’” Jia shares via phone as the couple enjoys a recent vacay in Miami.
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You can tell Elijah’s cheers of pride for his wife are a hallmark of their relationship and one of the reasons to respect their mutual reverence. They hold each other down while also lifting the other up. For now, the aspiring model remains at his 9-5, confident in his imminent exit ‘cause he “always been a king.” “God’s got something better for me than working for the man. We have our businesses together. Jia is the CEO of Boujee and Broke RVA, and I am the COO; also, with Jia’s photography, I’m the IT guy making sure everything’s on point with that,” he explains.
Jia adds, “Now, I am a photographer, content creator, and I’m the CEO of Boujee and Broke RVA, which is a group that I made in Richmond. It’s almost 14K members of people who meet up and form friendships.” It makes sense that Jia says “Teenage Love Affair” by Alicia Keys is the soundtrack for their relationship. Each was a refuge to the other as they both experienced family dysfunction and trauma while growing up. Early in their relationship, they learned to lean on each other, which prepared them to overcome setbacks like living together in a car while homeless. In the Instagram series #JiaEli, Jia gives a riveting account of how their bond started and evolved. She promises to deliver a “raw dark version as a published book for #JiaEli fans to read” sometime in the future.
The Mirandas have been together as a couple for six years and married for three, yet connected for most of their lives. The 26-year-olds met on MySpace during their tweens growing up in NYC. Elijah often spent the night at Jia’s apartment under the guise of visiting his sister in Brooklyn. He was the only boy Jia’s mother allowed to spend the night. Jia gushes as the nostalgia hits,
“Me and Elijah used to be on the phone every day from the sixth grade all the way to the 10th grade. That was a routine every day. As time went on, I started catching feelings for him because he always visited me from Staten Island. He came to visit me, one day, and my friend was like, ‘Look at him. He’s so handsome; he traveled to see you. Look how he’s looking at you. Look how he’s holding your hand.’”
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“Mind you, I’m only in the ninth grade. So I’m not seeing this, I’m very innocent. In my mind, I’m thinking that’s just normal stuff. I’m like, he’s just being a good friend.”
Despite their different backgrounds (she lived in the projects in Brooklyn, he lived in a modest home on Staten Island), they became best friends until their relationship left the friend zone following a celebration for Jia’s 20th birthday. Elijah remembers the exact moment he shifted from being Jia’s bestie to wanting to be her bae.
“We went out to eat that night, and I didn’t see anybody else. Her man was there, and one of my friends was there. But I didn’t see anybody else, only her. I felt like it was just us again.” Jia feigns as if she is flustered, but you can tell she’s flattered by the memory.
“I literally cheated on my ex to be with him. Because my ex was being detrimental to me, Elijah was very happy to be the side piece —”
“I sure was!” Elijah shamelessly brags.
As a proud interracial couple, Jia and Elijah have experienced bias, yet it has not hindered them from shaking off societal norms. Elijah’s family was initially unaware of Jia, but they eventually met and welcomed her.
“I was like the black sheep of the family, so I hid a lot of things from them, not just my personal life, but even like school life too,” he revealed. “I always dated Black girls, most of my friends were West Indian or African. So, I rarely had Hispanic friends; there might have been one or two. It was a culture shock for my family, but not for me.” Jia adds, “Their culture is Hispanic culture, so who they date is Hispanic people. Now, with Elijah being a black sheep, he experienced his whole life in Black culture,” she said. “When I walked in there, they welcomed me with open arms due to the fact that New York is culturally diffused anyway. They inadvertently treated me differently from all the other women his brothers brought to the house, but me and his family are amazing! I’m honestly blessed to be married into The Mirandas.”
When I ask what sparked their decision to get married, it was simple for Elijah. “Me and Jia had already starved together and cried together, slept in a car together. Last minute, my heart skipped a beat on Christmas Eve, and I found a $5 ring to propose to her, and I told her mother and family and friends what I was going to do, and they all gathered at the house to embrace this moment,” he shares.
“I told her mother I wanted the song ‘My First Love’ by Avant because she is my first love. I proposed to her with that $5 ring that looked real for temporary reasons, I got on one knee, and she said, ‘yes!’“
One theme that has kept their followers enthralled with the couple’s journey is how they have chronicled Jia’s weight loss.
In a video documenting the start of her transformation, Drake’s “Laugh Now Cry Later” plays in the background as they sit side by side, and Jia explains her readiness for change.
“I want to be the most authentic me; I want to be the most healthiest version of me mentally, spiritually, physically,” she said.
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As Elijah reassures her, you can feel the intensity of their connection. His fitness routine inspired her to make several attempts at losing weight, but an embarrassing moment at the amusement park was the catalyst that prompted Jia to take control of her health. They now reflect back on that moment and laugh, but at the time, it wasn’t funny.
“My weight has been up and down since I was a child; Elijah was with me, supporting me through the beauty in different phases of my life. In his eyes, I was Beyonce. We both did not notice how big I was getting until the roller coaster,” she recalls.
“We were in line and saw another big girl getting on the roller coaster. She couldn’t fit, two guys had to help her get in. I was like, ‘Damn, this gon’ be worse for me.’ Elijah was like, ‘No it’s not, it’s going to be great. We’re gonna have fun.’
“We get on the roller coaster, and I try to push the bar down on myself. Elijah is like, ‘Oh, let me help you.’ So he gets up top to push it. Then two other workers run trying to push it down. I’m looking around, people staring, and a little boy out of nowhere says, ‘Ma, she can’t fit, she can’t fit.’ So I got off, and I told Elijah, ‘I’m getting too big in these streets.’”
Through lifestyle changes and surgery and with support from Elijah, Jia dropped the weight. She is continuing to lose weight while flexing her curves as an ambassador for clothing brands such as SHEIN and Curvae. Awareness about how their genes make them prone to certain health conditions has been a key factor, especially for Elijah.
“Cancer runs in my family. I preach to Jia all the time, I want to be healthy, I want to be able to run after my kids at 45 years old and not be huffing or out of breath,” he says.
In that early video with Jia and Elijah on the couch, along with being her best self, she expresses her wish for healthy babies. A milestone, they both look forward to, but there’s no rush.
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“We’re too selfish right now to have kids. We want each other for ourselves, we want to be able to be fruitful with whatever we get right now before sharing it with our kids. We want to be able to live and then offer the fruits of our labor to our kids correctly,” Jia says.
Elijah agrees.
“Yeah, we can’t wait, but we can.
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