The world's most popular YouTuber has met his perfect match.
MrBeast proposed to his girlfriend, Thea Booysen, an internet personality from South Africa, on Christmas Day.
The two shared the news on their respective Instagram accounts on New Year's Day. "Ya boy did a thing 🥰🥰🥰," MrBeast wrote in the caption, along with a carousel of photos, which begins with a shot of the moment he popped the question.
View this post on Instagram
"We were opening presents, and then for the very last present, he asked me to close my eyes because it was a surprise," Booysen said. Both their parents were there to celebrate the holiday and watched as she, of course, said yes.
"I was trying to think of the best way to surprise her, MrBeast told People. Thea is really close to her family, so I wanted to make sure that they were part of this special moment."
Booysen began dating MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, in 2022 after they met through a mutual friend during a trip the YouTuber took to her home country of South Africa. After a flirtatious conversation at dinner, she returned home to find a message 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.
That same year, they made their red carpet debut at the Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards and made their relationship Instagram official.
A year into their relationship, MrBeast was already ready to propose, 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 her master's degree complete, Booysen is ready to say I do.
"In my mind, we're already married," Booysen said. "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."
Even though MrBeast is known for his elaborate challenges and large-scale stunts, he wanted his engagement to be small and special. "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, but I knew that I wanted it to be the opposite, to be really private and intimate," he said.
