MrBeast: Billionaire YouTuber joins Noah Lyles in romantic giant step to kick off the New Year

Ushering in the new year, Billionaire YouTuber MrBeast joined Noah Lyles in a romantic giant step by proposing to his longtime girlfriend Thea Booysen.

MrBeast whose real name is James Stephen “Jimmy” Donaldson, announced his engagement with Thea, 27, via his social media platforms on January 1, 2025.

“Ya boy did a thing 🥰🥰🥰,” wrote the popular YouTuber as the caption. According to People Magazine, MrBeast wanted to surprise his girlfriend while also making sure to include her family in the proposal.

“I was trying to think of the best way to catch her off guard so it would be a surprise,” he explained to the outlet. “Thea is really close to her family, so I wanted to make sure that they were included in this momentous occasion. Christmas worked out great because they were in town from the other side of the world.”

Booysen explained, “My family flew out from South Africa for Christmas and we were 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.”

While the social media star is known for his extravagant YouTube videos and giveaways, he wanted his engagement to be the opposite.

“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,” said MrBeast said, recalling how it all went down.

“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.”

The couple met while MrBeast was on a trip to Thea’s home country of South Africa in 2022. During the trip, he went to dinner with a mutual friend who invited Thea to join them.

“When I met him, I was quite surprised how down-to-earth he was, and also how intelligent he was,” Booysen recalled. “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.”

The billionaire YouTuber and Lyles first teamed up when MrBeast sponsored a 50m race between the Olympic champion and fellow YouTuber IShowSpeed for a $100,000 winning prize money.

Despite the race being for a philanthropic cause with all the $100,000 going to charity, the matchup went viral, making major global news headlines.

Lyles expectedly won the race convincingly and donated the money to his foundation - Lyles Brothers Foundation aimed at helping and training the next generation of Olympians.

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Following this, MrBeast appeared on Lyles' podcast Beyond The Records, in which they discussed track, gaming, and being the most influential TouTuber, boasting of a staggering 331 million subscribers—the most for any channel in the history of the platform ahead of football legend Christiano Ronaldo.