YouTubers Dan and Phil Confirm They’ve Secretly Been Dating Since 2009: “We Can’t Live In Fear Anymore”

YouTubers Dan Howell and Phil Lester confirmed in a new video they have been dating for almost 16 years, putting the speculation and rumors to rest for the first time since they launched their infamous YouTube account together in 2009.

“Alright, let’s get this over with. Are Dan and Phil in a relationship?” Howell said at the top of the video.

“Yes,” Lester confirmed, before Howell attempted to wrap up the video quickly. “Alright, bye!” he said.

The pair explained that their romantic relationship began soon after they first met. They have been “openly gay and have been living with each other for 15 years” ever since. “We fell into it hard and fast in 2009 and here we are almost 16 years later,” Howell said.

Though both Howell and Lester later came out as gay in 2019, Howell explained that they kept their relationship private in the years since because he endured an “extremely homophobic childhood.”

“I felt we had to hide the relationship because I was still hiding who I was to my friends, family, myself,” he said.

Lester noted that he wanted to give Howell “time to figure out what you wanted to do,” adding that, in a way, hiding their relationship felt like they were both “back in the closet.”

“What we had was the most important thing to me and I wanted to protect it,” Howell said. “So when other people tried to grab it and drag it into the light, I felt completely violated.”

The comedy duo also announced they will soon be launching a podcast.

However, they denied that this means they will be pivoting to couple vlogging content.

“This is a scary time in the world,” Howell said. “It feels like things are sliding backwards because the fighting for what was important was going a bit too well, but I think that’s why it’s more important than ever that we are like, ‘Hey, here we are, gay.’”

“If you’ll have us, we’d love to just finally be ourselves and do what we love, which is really how this should have been this whole time,” Lester told their fans.