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Tiffany Weaver has bought plenty of merchandise from the popular YouTube personality Mr. Beast for her two sons, so she was not surprised last spring when a particular email appeared in her inbox.

The email concerned casting for Mr. Beast’s upcoming gameshow, “Beast Games.” Weaver initially encouraged her sons to apply, but they were too young, so Weaver and her boyfriend, Steven England, applied instead.

“I will do anything for my kids,” said Weaver, who is originally from Grottoes but now lives in Washington state. “As long as it’s something that’s not gonna hurt me, sure, I’ll do it.”

Weaver works in medical sales and was once employed at Merck in Elkton. England works as a program manager for Microsoft. Both passed the lengthy approval process to get on the game show and then traveled to Las Vegas and Toronto over the summer to compete against 1,998 other contestants for one of the largest sums of money ever offered on a game show. Participants had to compete in a series of games and elimination challenges for a chance to win a $5 million grand prize.

Although Weaver and England did not win the $5 million grand prize on “Beast Games,” they still walked away at least $20,000 richer— and newly engaged.

In footage that was never aired during the show, England decided to propose to Weaver shortly after taking the $20,000 “bribe” that got him eliminated. He didn’t have a ring on hand, so he had to borrow one from another contestant.

“I was gonna be leaving, and I knew she was gonna be staying,” England said. “I thought about it while I was on stage.”

“Next thing I know, I see him walking down this long aisle with Jimmy — Mr. Beast — and I thought, ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.’ The funniest thing was, he whispered in my ear, ‘That’s not my ring, I’m going to have to give that back.’”

Weaver now has a ring, paid for by England’s winnings from the show. The couple waited to officially announce their engagement after the first episode of “Beast Games” aired on Dec. 19, thinking the footage would be in it. Although the footage was cut from the episode, they announced their engagement anyway.

While England was eliminated in the first episode, Weaver hung on until Episode 3, in which participants were put into “isolation cubes” in small groups. She was assigned to a room with a married couple, and participants were told that one of them needed to leave voluntarily or they would all be eliminated. Weaver assumed that one member of the couple would go to save the other, but both decided to stay, meaning that Weaver’s group was cut from the challenge.

“My strategy going into the challenge was I’m not gonna budge, but they were just as stubborn as I was,” Weaver said.

In some of the challenges, people refused to take a prize if it would mean the elimination of others, and Weaver said she was surprised by how much people “looked out for each other.”

“[Mr. Beast] was shocked no one would take the bribe,” Weaver said. “We kind of broke his game, in a way. We wouldn’t do that to each other. In most of his videos, people want the money.”

Weaver and England did not get to talk to Mr. Beast — whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson — very much, but both said he was a “normal guy” off camera.

“He’s just completely surrounded by people, so you never really see that,” England said. “But he’s a nice guy, just a regular fellow. He has to have a personality for the cameras, but before filming starts, he’s just talking to us.”

Competition is in Weaver’s blood. As a child in Grottoes, her father signed her up for baseball instead of softball, and she developed a love of sports. As a young woman, while attending Bridgewater College in 2001, she was crowned Miss Rockingham County Fair. She went on to win Miss Virginia Association of Fairs in 2002, the first pageant queen from the Rockingham County Fair to ever do so.

“I think I like competition more than anything,” Weaver said. “Even if it’s a game of Scrabble, I’m cutthroat.”

Although “Beast Games” have been criticized and even sued by participants who state they were never paid or treated poorly during filming, Weaver and England say their experience was positive.

“We were taken care of, there were medical staff on site,” Weaver said. “The production was the same people who filmed Survivor Australia, so the production itself was very professional.”

Weaver and Donaldson also brought home $2,000 each in compensation for participating in the show. Although she didn’t win any money besides that, Weaver did bring back a gift for her sons — behind-the-scenes knowledge.

“They know all the things that went down in the background,” Weaver said.

The first four episodes of “Beast Games” are now available on Amazon Prime or YouTube.

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