WAITRESS GOT ENGAGED 24 HOURS AFTER MEETING YOUTUBE FAN

Dani Scott, 22, a waitress in Galashiels, Scotland, got engaged 24 hours after meeting Jake, 24, a South Carolina retail worker who first turned up as a commenter on her YouTube videos about dumbphones. Jake flew about 4,000 miles in February 2026 for their first face-to-face meeting, and he proposed on a walk the next day.

“The day after we met, Jake proposed, whilst we were on a walk,” Dani told The Mirror. She said yes.

She did see it coming. “I knew it was going to happen, but it was still so exciting,” she said.

From a YouTube comment to a long-distance romance

Dani runs a YouTube channel arguing that dumbphones, meaning mobile phones without internet access or apps, beat smartphones. Jake left a comment telling her that her videos had inspired him to start a channel of his own on the same subject.

The two ended up watching each other’s content. In December 2025, Jake commented again, this time asking for her email address. She agreed, and the pair swapped emails all day before Jake suggested a phone call.

After a few calls, they decided they liked each other, even with an ocean between them. “We started dating a week after our first call, even though we’d never met in person,” Dani said.

She said she was drawn to the way he sees the world. “He’s very gentle, kind, and really into nature, we just instantly clicked,” she said.

The engagement talk apparently started early. “We’d decided we wanted to get married from the first moment we started talking,” she said.

The timing raised eyebrows

Dani had already called off one wedding. “I met Jake through YouTube, a month after splitting from my fiancé, who I broke up with a few weeks before our wedding,” she told the Mirror.

According to PEOPLE, she met that fiancé at university in 2024, when both were studying theology. They had planned to marry in September 2025, postponed the wedding, then ended the engagement in October 2025. “He wasn’t happy, and I wasn’t happy,” Dani told the magazine.

Not everyone has been quick to cheer for the new engagement. Dani said her family have come round to Jake, but some friends think getting engaged again four months after the breakup is a bit soon. “Some friends didn’t even know I’d broken up, so they are quite confused,” she said.

“People’s judgement does upset me sometimes, but I think over time people will get more used to the idea, as they will see that I’m actually happy,” she added.

Her family were skeptical at first, she said, but warmed up after meeting Jake during his visit.

Dani described those 12 days in Scotland as “the best 12 days of my life.” She also admitted that long distance is hard. “It was much easier to cope before we’d met in person,” she said.

Part of the rush, she explained, is the paperwork. She wants to apply for a visa to move to the United States, and the couple expected the process could take more than a year. While it is being processed she cannot visit the US, so her first trip to America would be her own wedding.

Jake planned to visit her in April and every few months after that until the wedding. Dani’s family cannot afford to travel to South Carolina for the ceremony, the Mirror reported, so the couple planned a celebration in Scotland beforehand so her relatives could be part of it.

The latest reports say the couple still plan to marry in South Carolina in summer 2027.