Joey Graceffa Confirms Breakup With Longtime Boyfriend, Fellow Creator Daniel Preda

Joey Graceffa is in the midst of a transitional moment, both professionally and personally.

As his long-running mystery TV series, Escape The Night, evolves into a board game venture following its cancellation at YouTube after four seasons, the 29-year-old YouTube vet has also announced his breakup with longtime boyfriend and fellow creator Daniel Preda.

Graceffa acknowledges that while the breakup wasn’t directly caused by the coronavirus pandemic, it played a part in the relationship in that the couple “didn’t have any distractions to keep us from what’s kinda been building up over the past couple of years.” Graceffa and Preda intend to remain friends after the breakup, as Preda moves out of the house the couple has long shared. They also plan to share “joint custody” of their dogs, with Preda taking two and Graceffa keeping two.

In addition to his own lifestyle-focused YouTube channel, Mister Preda, which counts 260,000 subscribers and around 500,000 monthly views, Preda has served as a senior producer on Escape The Night since its third season.

Graceffa, for his part, has been on YouTube for roughly a decade, amassing 9.4 million subscribers on his flagship channel, as well as 2.7 million on a gaming hub, and 700,000 subscribers on a secondary vlogging channel. Throughout his long career, Graceffa has also tried his hand at a number of off-platform business ventures, including music and books — via the release of his 2018 EP Kingdom as well as a dystopian YA novel series dubbed Children Of Eden.

You can check out the couple’s emotional breakup announcement below: