CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – “It just never was caught on camera. Now it’s caught on camera,” Jay Kelley told Clarksville Now of the viral TikTok videos he makes with his wife, Gabrielle.
The Clarksville natives, along with their three children, have amassed over 985,000 followers on their TikTok account – and they’ve already got plans for when they hit 1 million.
‘She slid in the DMs’
The pair were both attending Austin Peay State University when they met in 2015. Jay was 21 and Gabrielle was 18.
“She slid in the DMs,” Jay said.
Gabrielle said she was just asking him a question in the message, and he asked her to go to the movies.
“I mean, I had my eye on her already because we had followed each other,” Jay said. “You still slid in first.”
“I don’t care, you still took me on a date like that same day,” Gabrielle responded, laughing.
After that, Gabrielle said, they never stopped hanging out. They got pregnant with their first daughter, Nevaeh, shortly thereafter, and when Neveah was just 3 months old, they got pregnant again with their son, Jeremiah.
The couple moved to El Paso, Texas, where Gabrielle started doing YouTube videos and posting to her Instagram with mostly makeup content. She later started incorporating more family-based content about their lives.
After having their third child, 5-month-old Novalee, in December, they moved back to Clarksville so they could be closer to both of their families.
Taking off on TikTok
It wasn’t until March 2020 when quarantine hit that the couple took their TikTok game to the next level. Jay said he didn’t have to go into work for a month, which allowed them more free time to make videos.
“It was normally her makeup account, and she would just post makeup on there, and she finally started recording me,” Jay said.
Their first viral video captured what Jay and Gabrielle would normally be doing otherwise: pranking one another.
“And I think it was one video where I picked him up from work, and he was walking to get in the car, and I kept driving, so he was trying to get in, but I was just recording and laughing, and then that video blew up and we just started filming everything,” Gabrielle told Clarksville Now.
She said their first video to surpass 1 million views was unexpected: She was recording their 4-year-old son, Jeremiah, when Jay, in the background, fell off one of their kids’ scooters.
“I was trying to record Jeremiah and you just see Jay on the side fly off of the scooter, and that one hit 15 million views,” Gabrielle said.
“It was crazy, it was like in a couple hours it was at 500,000 (views), and I was like, ‘Gabby, this one is going to hit 1 million,'” Jay added.
They gained 100,000 followers in a month, and Jay and Gabrielle soon found themselves with new full-time jobs.
“It just became a job; campaigns started rolling in, brand deals and everything – changed our lives,” Gabrielle said.
Striking the balance
The couple said it’s been easy to come up with content to post on the app, which they do three or four times a day.
It’s harder sometimes to deal with the inevitable negative comments.
“I tell her all the time, ‘Stop reading the comments,’ because you’re going to get the people that like us, and you’re going to get the people that don’t like us no matter what we do,” Jay said.
At one point, the comments drove them to consider quitting the app.
But there have been a lot of positives, too. They’ve met other families through social media that they call friends, and they plan to travel soon to collaborate on content with another family.
“You lost some, but you gained some,” Gabrielle said.
The pair don’t like to call those who follow them “followers.” They are very aware that their supporters are the reason they have the opportunities they do.
“We don’t ever like to say ‘followers’ or ‘fans,’ we just love all of our supporters,” Jay said.
“Because we always let them know that if it wasn’t for you guys, we literally wouldn’t be here,” Gabrielle said.
To see their work, check them out on TikTok @thekelleyfamily.