American couple’s dream of life in Paris became a nightmare

If you had gone on YouTube a few months back and clicked on a channel called “KJ and Tony Move To France,” you’d have seen a happy American couple visiting the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre and stopping for chouquettes and expressos at the boulangerie near their quaint AirB&B walkup on Rue de la Harpe, in Paris’ bustling Quartier Latin.

KJ Foster, 58, and her 66-year-old husband, Tony, had abandoned their comfortable lives in sunny Boca Raton, Fla., last year to fulfill their dream of living as Parisans — selling off or giving away virtually all their belongings and leaving behind beloved family members.

They began filming their la vie en rose fantasy and uploading it to YouTube.

In the first month their channel became a hit, and they quickly gained thousands of followers.

But behind the camera, the Parisian idyll had become a nightmare — thanks to French haughtiness, language difficulties, homesickness, the challenges of living in walk-up apartments, and some bad French onion soup.

Now, just a few months after they landed in the City of Light with its charming cafes, spacious boulevards and world famous cuisine, they’ve reluctantly returned home to start over again, moving into a rental and buying new furnishings, hoping to move again to Paris, maybe part-time, in a year or two.

In preparation for last November’s move, Tony told The Post, “We sold our four cars, gave away our furniture, our five big screen televisions, most of our belongings.” 

About a year before they left, they even sold their home, taking advantage of the booming Florida real estate market, and knowing they’d live in Paris one day.

The only warning they received about their major move was from KJ’s octogenarian mother. 

“My mom said to me, ‘Are you sure you want to do this, because what if you come back?’” KJ said.

“I said, ‘We’re NOT coming back, except for visits.’ But mother always knows best.”

KJ and Tony had made the final decision to move to Paris full-time when they flew there last May “for the weekend — Thursday to Monday — which is a little bit extreme,” he admits. It was not their first visit. “But we had such a wonderful time, basically fell in love with Paris, that it trumped everything else.” 

Arriving with some belongings in suitcases, neither spoke French, and KJ now admits that was a big mistake as Parisians have an icy attitude toward non-French speakers. 

“We had the experience of people saying they didn’t understand us, but they understood a lot more than they were willing to admit,” KJ, a native of Sayville, Long Island, told The Post. “They say un peu, meaning ‘a little,’ when they really are fluent in English.” 

Another issue they faced was Parisian haughtiness. “If they weren’t gracious,” noted Tony, “I left that on them.” 

A former chain restaurant executive, he later earned a doctorate, and was involved in addiction treatment before retiring.

KJ is a counselor and psychotherapist. Both recovering addicts, he’s been sober for 20 years, she for 14.

They met at an AA meeting, they state proudly, and have been married for 13 years.

According to Tony it was a “confluence of events and a few glitches along the way that created a perfect storm — six or seven things all coming together” that resulted in them abandoning their Paris dream, at least for now, and returning home.

When they agreed to rent their quaint, beamed ceiling 431-square foot, 4^th floor, two-room unit—- “smaller than we were used to”— they both “assumed” it was in an elevator building.

But when they arrived, they depressingly discovered they’d have to climb four flights of stairs, 59 steps in all, “multiple times a day.”

Their temporary place was “literally around the corner from Notre-Dame,” with Tony visiting the Gothic cathedral as often as “twice a day.”

In their premiere video, they filmed themselves huffing and puffing up the staircase, with Tony candidly telling their viewers, “It’s definitely a workout.”

But it was KJ who would suffer the most. She had been a runner when she was younger and had developed a bad knee.

Those long stairs became hell for her.

“With the up and down the stairs it got to the point,” she says, “where at night the pain would wake me up, it was just so much more than I was used to. 

“But it wasn’t like I wanted to go back to the U.S. because of my knee. It was a combination of a lot of things.”

Those included suddenly experiencing depression and a serious case of homesickness, she says, “with everything all happening at once. I guess I just didn’t anticipate the severity of it.”

While their YouTube channel “KJ And Tony Move To Paris” was no “Emily In Paris” — the popular Netflix rom-com about an American girl who goes to work for a French social media company — KJ and Tony’s channel suddenly exploded with new viewers.

One hit video was their discovery of a Parisian gastronomic phenomenon: the hit hole-in-the-wall US Hot Dog stand.

“It had sauerkraut with the dog and being as easterners a hot dog has to have sauerkraut,” Tony fondly recalls. “We did a video on it and once we found the place we went like every weekend.”

But interest in Paris living was so great, KJ says, that it caused her enormous stress and anxiety to produce more and more videos.

“When we started this journey, I thought, ‘Oh, let’s do some videos. It was very much casual,” she says. “We created out first video, which was our Paris apartment tour, and it exploded, got monetized and started earning ad revenue, in less than a month, and we had eight thousand subscribers in less than a month … and with me focusing time and attention on the videos, it just became too overwhelming.”

She feels she became addicted again — this time to producing more videos. 

“Tony was saying ‘slow down. We don’t have to do so many, like don’t put so much pressure on yourself,’ and I think all of that contributed to my depression. It did play a significant part, absolutely. It was an addiction, it’s absolutely true.

“We were getting positive feedback from the videos and people were enjoying them, and I felt like, ‘Oh, I need to not let people down. They’re going to feel disappointed if I don’t post a video every week.’”

Tony believes the channel has been successful because of “our personalities, and particular KJ’s personality because the camera loves her.” 

She says it’s mainly the topic — Paris, and them moving there that caught the audience interest.

On top of her knee issue, which may result in replacement surgery, her depression, the homesickness and the stress from feeding the YouTube machine, KJ suffered a “violent” case of food poisoning, possibly from French onion soup.

 “It’s hard to say where I picked it up,” she says. 

But, wherever the location, she became violently ill.

“I got worse, and that was when I began thinking that I just wanted to go home. I couldn’t think of anything else, but going home and being comfortable. It was really a dark time.”

KJ and Tony had planned to drive to Nice, in the south of France, but she concluded, “I felt that flying home was a better bet than being in a car all day and not knowing if and when I would be able to access a restroom. I insisted Tony go to Nice without me because I was in such a negative state of mind and knew that it would not be helpful for him to come with me.

 “I actually felt a sense of relief when I knew I was going home, and Tony would soon follow,” she says. 

“I felt Boca is where we need to be right now. Next time our journey back to Paris is not necessarily going to be, ‘Oh, we’re up and moving permanently.’ It’s going to be more of this, I think — back and forth.”