Personal pranks against each other catapulted one Brooklyn couple to internet fame.

Kaitlin Reagan and her boyfriend Francesco LoPresti didn’t expect to make a living from this. It was the beginning of the pandemic, and they were just looking to have fun.

“I’ll never forget when our first video went viral. It was like this video of me, like pranking him, trying and trying to not get him to go out with his friends. And we were just like staring at like how many followers we were getting. Like we couldn’t believe it. And it was such an incredible feeling,” Reagan said.

They were both 24 years old living in their parents’ Bensonhurst houses, finding out they could communicate with the world.

“We didn’t really understand why. But the next day after we blew up, we were like, ‘Let’s give it another try.’ And we did. And it just kept doing so well and we were having so much fun doing it, so it was just really good,” she said.

Sharing funny prank videos quickly turned into them sharing videos of a painful struggle.

At 18 years old, Francesco was diagnosed with testicular cancer. He was in remission, but in September 2021, the cancer came back and spread.

The couple relied on their TikTok followers for support. Francesco passed away on March 21, 2022.

The two met at a dancing school in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn at 12 years old and were in each others' lives ever since. Reagan says his passing left her in a dark place.

“It was like blurry. It’s a blurry time. It’s really hard to explain. I felt like time was going, but like I was just stuck. Like I couldn’t get out of, like, almost like my house,” she said.

She took a break from social media for a year and says friends and family helped her to push through.

Three years after losing her partner, Reagan says she’s finding her individuality. Sharing videos online of her travels, business ventures and even dating. She says the people on social media have opened up to her, making it easier to share her grief.

“A lot of people reached out to me and was like, ‘Thank you so much for sharing your journey because like you were able to kind of like communicate what I’m feeling in a way that I could in and kind of made sense out of it. And even if you couldn’t make sense out of it, knowing that like we don’t make sense together helps so much,’” she said.

For those going through similar struggles, she says family and friends can be a powerful force for healing, but so too can social media. She says it will get better.

“Give yourself grace. And I promise you one day, like, I know it’s a little bit corny, but there really is like there’s something on the other side that’s really, really beautiful that I know you’re going to see one day,” she said.