Former YouTube celebrity Jenna Marbles, whose real name is Jenna Mourey, and her partner of 8 years, vlogger Julien Solomita, announced their engagement this week.
According to E! News, Solomita, 28, shared on Twitch that he popped the question to Marbles, 34, telling viewers, “A little while ago-this is so weird-I asked Jenna to marry me, and she said yes. So, we are engaged.”
Exciting news
Solomita shared more of his excitement with Twitch viewers, saying, “I’m very excited, and it feels good to get the words out because I wanted to tell you for a while and I didn’t because it was giving me anxiety so I just kind of held onto it. And I think today I realized it was kind of flipped, and it was giving me more anxiety to kind of hold on to it, so there’s the news.”
While on YouTube, Marbles gained a following of over 20 million people with her videos, posting tutorials for applying makeup while drunk, filming her dog making funny faces, and tie-dying her clothes using bleach.
Although she had a massive following, she announced in 2020 that she was leaving YouTube after receiving backlash for wearing black-face makeup during a video about Nicki Minaj, joking about Asians, and criticizing women who “slept around.”
In hot water
In a reuploaded video, Marbles apologized for her past errors in judgement, telling viewers, “I feel like we’re at a time where we are purging ourselves of any and everything toxic,” she explained.
“I’ve been requested that I address things that I’ve done in my past. I (get) a lot of Tweets from people that are saying, like, ‘We love you, you unproblematic queen,’ which always makes me uncomfortable because I’m a person…those that are familiar with how long I’ve been on the internet know that that’s not true.”
She went on to talk about her past mistakes, saying, “…I’ve definitely done things in the past that weren’t great and I’m not completely unproblematic…there’s a couple things people want me to address and apologize for and I’m happy to do that because what I want from the people that I support and that I like is to have accountability and to know that I’m supporting someone who’s morals and values align with my own.”
She continued her apology, addressing content she had made private due to backlash from fans and her reasoning for privatizing them. “It’s hard for that content to exist at all because I think people watch it and don’t bother to look at when it was posted or, you know, care about what path I took to get to where I am…it offends them now and, if that’s the case where people will watch something and then be offended now, I don’t want it to exist. So I’ve privated a lot of my old content.”
Marbles went on to directly address the black-face video she posted, saying, “The first (thing) I would like to address now is the fact that there are people that were offended that I did black-face as Nicki Minaj in 2011.”
She went on to show the clip of herself in the get-up impersonating the singer while explaining that it wasn’t her “intention to do black-face” and that all that mattered was that “people were offended and it hurt them and for that I am so unbelievably sorry.”
Marbles and Solomita met at an L.A. bar where Solomita worked while he was a junior in college. The couple bought a house together in 2018 and shared the news with fans in a YouTube video called We Bought a House.
“To me this house is a gigantic responsibility,” Marbles shared. “I’m really excited to take that on but it’s not lost on me what owning a home means…to me I’m terrified. I’m terrified of everything.”
Solomita joined in, saying, “For those of you who follow us closely you know that, you know, this has been a goal of ours for some time now.”
Fans will look forward to hearing more news about the engagement and wedding in the future.