Meghan Camarena

Meghan Channing Camarena was born on July 17, 1987 in Fresno, California, and was raised in Modesto, California. She is half-Mexican and half German-Irish. She has two older half-brothers, Andrew and Jonathan, and also has two younger twin brothers, Christian and David. She graduated from Davis High School in 2005.

She was involved in an unhealthy relationship with a boy in college, whom she later left. She dated Jimmy Wong for two years before splitting with him in mid-2013. Since 2015, she is in a relationship with fellow TV personality John Estanislau.

Meghan Camarena became interested in YouTube videos watching a couple of popular YouTubers of the time. She learned to use the camera and to edit from a friend named Sean and began helping out at the video department at her youth group. She made short home videos and posted them on her newly created YouTube channel, 'strawburry17', in 2007. One of the first videos to gain popularity was her lip dub of 'I'm a Gummy Bear', featuring her brother David. The video got noticed by major record labels like Sony, Warner Brothers, Universal and Atlantic, which offered her to promote music for them. She decided to leave Bible college to pursue YouTube fulltime and began posting vlogs everyday on another channel named 'LifeBurry'.

By this time, Joey Graceffa had decided to move from Boston to Los Angeles, motivating Meghan to do the same. In 2011, she was encouraged by Jimmy Wong to participate in a YouTube video contest called 'Next Up', where she ended up as one of the winners and was able to fund her relocation to California. Already an established YouTuber, she lost many subscribers after Google decided to remove inactive and closed accounts from the system in 2012. This prompted her to hire specialists to turn her channel into a brand. She also ventured into television and film, appearing on two seasons of 'The Amazing Race' and working as a backstage correspondent on truTV's 'Fake Off'. In 2015, she signed a deal with Maker Studios which allowed her to work with several renowned content creators from the entertainment industry.

The journey from an average girl to a YouTube star was not easy for Meghan Camarena, who had a rough childhood. Soon after Meghan’s 4th birthday, her grandmother died of breast cancer and her mother was also diagnosed with cancer and was forced to leave her job. Even at an early age, Meghan had to take care of her younger brothers and household chores, as her mother often suffered from depression and her father had to work overtime.

Her mother, who had decided to home-school her and her brothers when she was in second grade, was hardly able to teach them. After her mother tried to commit suicide, Meghan was sent to her grandmother's place for a year and went back to school as a fourth grader with the knowledge of a second grader. She was often the target of bullying, but still managed to get good grades. Her family briefly experienced happiness after her mother recovered and started a massage school, but she was soon diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and again succumbed to depression.

Meghan also suffered from depression during this time, began drinking, and even though was liked by friends for her humorous nature, especially when drunk, she barely managed to pass school. She even considered consuming all her mother's medicines to end her life, but after she began going to the church her grandma used to take her to, she found peace and joined their Bible college internship program. From that point, she regained control of her life, ditching alcohol as well as her abusive boyfriend, and has never looked back.