How Being A Celebrity Couple Can Earn You Millions

In Kenya, one doesn't need to be a celebrity to date another celebrity and go viral as a couple in showbiz. Just like any other person, it's easy to ask the person you like who is in showbiz to be your boyfriend/girlfriend.

However, on top of falling in love with a celebrity, the two of you have the potential to make money, and in today's world, being a celebrity couple has the potential for good business.

Viral Tea takes a look at celebrity couples who have minted millions from just being together:

Diana Marua & Bahati

Singer Kevin Bahati and his wife content creator Diana Marua offer one of the most popular examples of couples who happened to fall in love with each other and make money.

Bahati was a popular music star when he met Marua, whose popularity only grew when she started seeing him. The result has been her profile as a YouTuber growing tenfold, bagging numerous influencing gigs and her YouTube channel being ranked among the top 10 performers in 2021 and 2022.

Bahati and Diana Marua. /INSTAGRAM.DIANA BAHATI

Started in August 2019 and currently, with 815,000 subscribers, Marua's YouTube channel is outperforming her husband’s which was started seven years earlier in August 2012. Her channel has so far amassed 138 million views, 66.6 million views short of Bahati's channel which boasts 1.4 million subscribers with 205 million views.

Consistency on her channel has been her major boost assuring her at least 100,000 views per video. In addition, Bahati was the brains behind Marua's rap career under the stage name Diana B, with songs such as Mubaba, One Day, and Hatutaachana, which were purposed to bring more traffic than entertainment.

From Diana’s YouTube channel alone, depending on how active and the nature of the content she puts out in a month, Marua makes at least Ksh230,000 a month. In a good month, the amount surpasses Ksh500,000.

“When I was working for Bahati, a video that Diana shoots gets an average of 100,000 views. That is massive, and if you combine both their channels, those guys would easily make close to Ksh3 million in a month.” JT Mzeiya, Bahati’s former videographer, revealed to the Business Daily.

Diana B and Bahati have also collaborated and partnered with several brands both together and as individuals and have made plenty of money through lucrative deals with reputable brands.

Nameless & Wahu Kagwi

Arguably the country's famous couple, Nameless and Wahu have leveraged well on the YouTube model of payment which is based on watch time hours as well as the number of clicks on a channel and time spent on a particular video counts.

Content creators simply tend to make more money on the platform because of their much longer videos compared to those of musicians, usually a 3-minute video. Nameless and Wahu have featured together in songs such as Back It Up, Feeling, Deep and Te Amo among others on top of their successful careers in music.

“We have just started doing it as a couple because it wasn’t something that was there during our early days. We can’t mention the amount but it is a money-making opportunity,” Nameless, real name David Mathenge, and his wife Wahu stated.

Wahu was in 2022 picked as an ambassador for a popular insecticide brand which launched its national anti-malaria campaign.

Dorea Chege & DJ Dibul

The Maria TV series actress and fiancée Dickson Ndegwa 29, aka Mugithi Deejay (DJ) Dibul, had left the country two Sundays ago for a vacation in Dubai, an all-expense paid trip courtesy of a travel start-up agency.

“December was a busy one for both of us, especially me because it is the month when I make most of my money. We hadn’t spent some quality time together and I thought a vacation to Dubai in February wouldn’t hurt. It’s an all-paid trip by the tour firm which we have partnered with as their brand ambassadors,” Dibul revealed to the Business Daily a day before their departure.

DJ Dibul works at Kamene TV and Kamene FM under MediaMax Networks and Dorea is popularly known as the character name Maggie in Maria. They are the newest and most trending celebrity couple for months, since going public with their relationship in February 2022.

Dorea, who is also a content creator with over 1.2 million followers on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook had been secretly seeing DJ Dibul for six months before going public after reports went rife about their relationship.

They had kept silent on the matter to avoid speculations that they feared might somehow end up denting their respective brands but their tables turned with the announcement of their relationship.

Dorea Chege and DJ Dibul in Dubai. /INSTAGRAM.DOREA CHEGE

“With blogs, you can never trust them, they can easily publish negative stories for the sake of clickbait and that can end up tarnishing one’s brand so we had to take care.

"In the process somehow our relationship became a talking point and we were getting a lot of this traction, brands started approaching us for partnerships and collaboration. That’s when we realised we could make money together because most of the brands kept insisting on having us as a package.” Dorea, the talkative of the two, explained.

Having been in the content creation and influencing space for longer than Dj Dibul, Dorea on individual projects charges not less than Ksh30,000 on advertisement campaigns depending on the type of client and the duration of the gig. For a couple's package rate, it was much easier as they don’t take anything less than Ksh200,000 for any partnerships or collaborations.

So far the love-smitten duo has done several partnerships with brands ranging from smartphones to tour companies, using their fast-growing YouTube channel, The Bulls Family, currently standing at 196,000 subscribers, to push their brand.

Wanjiru Njiru & Ben Cyco

Youtuber, fashion blogger, and founder of Maua Wear, Wanjiru Njiru shares the same sentiments with her husband, gospel singer Ben Kariuki alias Ben Cyco.

Besides influencing gigs, the couple currently hosts a property show, the JoyRide podcast which they started in February 2022 and which has been paying them well.

To maximise the gains, the couple who actively promote their podcast on their respective social media platforms with over 200,000 followers on Instagram alone, have made The JoyRide available on every single streaming platform, be it audio or visual from Boomplay, YouTube or Apple Podcast to tap into a much larger audience.

The podcast is audiovisual, compared to traditional podcasts which offer the audio mode of listening. The couple has also been hosting live podcast experiences in different locations majorly in the universities enabling them to make money from ticket purchases.

More income comes from collaborating with various brands targeting its audience and who in return inject monetary gains in form of sponsorships. Celebrating its first anniversary, the podcast amassed over 3.7 million listeners across all platforms with 1,950 attending the four live experiences hosted in that period.

“We plan to make the live experience bigger and better. Maybe we should go to the stadiums now, I don’t know. I like making money and it’s even sweeter when you make money with your partner. That’s always the tick for me, making money with my partner,” Wanjiru explained.

The two got married in 2021 after over 10 years of dating.

Wanjiru Njiru and Ben Cyco. /INSTAGRAM.WANJIRU NJIRU