Renowned YouTuber Mr. Beast Announces Engagement with Thea Booysen

YouTuber Mr. Beast has made public news of his engagement to girlfriend Thea Booysen. The 26-year-old revealed that he’d proposed on Christmas Day, sharing photos of the moment he went down on one knee.Mr. Beast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, is the world’s most popular YouTuber with 340 million subscribers.

“Ya boy did a thing,” the caption reads. “I intentionally dropped a large box to make noise before presenting the real gift – with the ring inside- to her. And then I went down on a knee and proposed,” he said in an interview. He said he popped the question while Booysen’s family was visiting.

“My family flew out from South Africa for Christmas, and we are going to do Christmas in our house so both families were here. We were opening presents, and then for the very last present he asked me to close my eyes because it was a surprise,” Booysen revealed.

Fiancée Thea, originally from South Africa, also has her own channel, TheaBeauty, with close to 40,000 subscribers. Now living in the US, the 27-year-old also streams games on Twitch and is a published author.

• More Stories: Louis Vuitton Revives Its Iconic Noughties Murakami Collection

The couple first met in 2022 in South Africa and has since been going strong in their relationship. “When we were introduced, it came through right away how brilliant Thea is. I knew within the first few minutes of meeting that I wanted the chance to date her. Thankfully, she also felt a strong connection,” Jimmy Donaldson said.

The two love-birds reaffirmed their relationship through an Instagram post in 2023 after making their red-carpet debut at the Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice Awards. Jimmy Donaldson is current serving as a produce on the reality competition series “Beast Games.”

According to close reports, the couple say they’re not planning a big wedding. ‘We’re thinking of doing it somewhere on an island where we’re far away from just about everybody,” said Thea. “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.”

The engagement comes amid a myriad of controversies in recent months that Donaldson is battling. Ontario’s labor ministry is currently investigating an industrial accident on the Toronto set of Beast Games, the YouTuber’s newly released Prime Video competition.

The ministry says a worker was injured by falling wood on Sept. 11 on the set, a miniature village constructed for the show on the grounds of the former Downsview Airport.