Congratulations to MrBeast and Thea Booysen, who got engaged on Christmas Day.
The two shared the news on their respective Instagram accounts on New Years 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.
Booysen posted a video in which she showed off the ring.
"Thea is really close to her family, so I wanted to make sure that they were included in this momentous occasion," MrBeast told People. "Christmas worked out great because they were in town from the other side of the world."
Booysen's family was visiting from their home country of South Africa for Christmas, allowing for both families to be present for his surprise proposal.
"We were opening presents, and then for the very last present he asked me to close my eyes because it was a surprise," Booysen recalled, to which MrBeast added, "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."
MrBeast admitted he did not want to make the proposal a big spectacle and preferred to keep it "really private and intimate."
The two met in 2022 through a mutual friend who invited Booysen to join them for dinner while the popular YouTuber was visiting her home country. Booysen said she was "quite surprised" by how down-to-earth he was.
"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," she remembered. "He wasn't sitting there with an ego."
"When we were first introduced, it came through right away how brilliant Thea is," MrBeast told People.
"I kept thinking she is really smart and beautiful," he continued. "I knew within the first few minutes of meeting that I wanted the chance to date her. Thankfully, she also felt a strong connection."
After returning to the United States, MrBeast DM'd Booysen on X and asked to read her book, The Marked Children, when it was finished. She reached out more than a month later with a completed version, sparking a three-hour phone conversation that solidified their bond, in her eyes.
"Then I knew [he was the one]," Booysen said. "I fell in love with his brain. To me [that's] everything — your brain, your drive, your discipline, your character, that's everything to me. So after that, he immediately planned to come back to South Africa to meet up with me this time, and we started dating the moment he arrived."