Ray William Johnson

Despite being one of the most widely followed YouTube personalities, Ray has managed to keep his personal life relatively low profile. He does have a younger brother with whom he is quite close.

He once dated his YouTube co-star Anna Akana but it ended soon afterwards.

At present, it is rumored that he has been dating Kelly Farral since 2016.

Ray William Johnson was born on 14 August, 1981 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He spent his entire childhood in that city where he attended the Norman North High School in 1999.

After graduating from high school in 1999, Ray attended the Columbia University with a major in history. Initially, he wanted to be a lawyer but that never materialized.

The creative streak in him manifested as early as his college years. He started a YouTube channel and published video blogs encompassing various subjects. The channel, which has since been deleted, was not a big hit at that time, with only 30 people following it.

Ray’s YouTube career started with his namesake channel in the April of 2009. He started publishing videos in a series called ‘Equals Three (=3)’. It became instantly famous making ray an overnight celebrity. The series contained a string of videos commenting on popular YouTube videos. Funny, sarcastic and often dark, his commentary immediately connected with millions of people worldwide.

The series went on to create many landmarks and records at the time. His channel ‘Ray William Johnson’ became the first channel to cross the five million subscribers mark on YouTube. The number of followers on his channel has been on a constant upward spiral ever since. The total views on his channel has crossed a whopping 3 billion. The popularity of ‘Equal Three’ was such that for almost two years (2011-2013), the channel had the highest number of subscribers on the site. In the early months of 2012, Ray created history by being the first YouTube millionaire. In the early months of 2012, Ray created history by being the first YouTube millionaire.

It is not to say that everything was a walk in the park all throughout. His videos faced extreme criticism and negative reviews from a particular section of critics who found it extremely crass and not suitable to be called comedy. However, these critiques were few and far between to stall Ray’s meteoric growth.

Notwithstanding these criticisms, some of which even claimed that ray does copyright infringement by creating content on already viral videos, Ray continued to do what he does best- make videos. He even partnered with a studio, Maker Studios, who provided him with a set in Culver City, California in 2011. Before then, Ray used to make the videos in his apartment in New York City.

Later that year, Ray did a Spanish version of his hit show ‘Equals Three’, namely, ‘Igual a Tres’. Although it did not break the ceiling like the original show, this show was well received by the Spanish speaking populace. Around the same time, they created another YouTube channel – ‘Your Favorite Martian’, where they made funny animated videos.

Ray won critical acclaim with his web series ‘Riley Rewind’, which earned him the 7th spot of Variety magazine’s Best Web Series of 2013 list.

He also got a place at the prestigious Hollywood Reporter’s list of “Comedy Class of 2013.