MrBeast finds his Mrs! YouTube star reveals Christmas Day engagement
MrBeast has found his better half.
The popular YouTuber revealed to People in an interview published Wednesday that he asked girlfriend and author Thea Booysen to marry him on Christmas Day.
"We were opening presents, and then for the very last present he asked me to close my eyes because it was a surprise," Booysen told the outlet. Both their parents were there to celebrate the holiday and watched on as she "of course said yes."
"I was trying to think of the best way to catch her off guard," MrBeast told People. "Thea is really close to her family, so I wanted to make sure that they were included in this momentous occasion."
Booysen began dating MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, in 2022 after they met through a mutual friend on a trip the YouTuber took to her home country of South Africa. After a flirtatious conversation at dinner, she came home to find a DM on X from MrBeast asking to read her upcoming book "The Marked Children," Booysen told People.
"I thought YouTubers were just sort of a persona, but when I met him, I was quite surprised to see that he's actually a nice guy. He wasn't sitting there with an ego," she said.
A year into their courtship, MrBeast was already ready to pop the question, but Booysen said she encouraged him to wait until after she graduated from her master's program (she studied human cognitive neuropsychology at the University of Edinburgh).
Now, with a master's diploma in hand, Booysen is ready to say "I do."
"In my mind, we're already married," she told the outlet. "We talk about children, how we're going to live together when we're 70 years old… this was just another step in the process."
MrBeast, considered one of the most popular and highest-paid content creators in the business, is known for pulling off large stunts on his channel. But he wanted the proposal (and the wedding) to be more lowkey.
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"My friends thought I would want to propose in a very public way, like some sort of spectacle at the Super Bowl or somewhere else really big like that," he told People, "but I knew that I wanted it to be the opposite, to be really private and intimate."
As for the ceremony, something on a secluded island sounds appealing to the couple.
"This will definitely be more family and friends — definitely more private," MrBeast said.
"We're thinking of doing it somewhere on an island where we're far away from just about everybody," Booysen added. "We're not going to try and have a big, extravagant wedding. It's going to be nice, but it's certainly going to be intimate (with) close family and friends."