This week, former Vine star and current Disney Channel actor Jake Paul was revealed to be a horrendous nightmare of a neighbor. In some of his videos are a a set of twins named Marcus and Lucas Dobre. Though they regularly collaborate with Paul, the Dobres have a much more notable name helping them: their mother, 1987 world all-around gymnastics champion Aurelia Dobre.
The Dobre twins’ YouTube channel was launched in 2015, and they have over four million subscribers. Like Paul, a lot of their videos are horsing around in public places and being a mild nuisance, though theirs are a little dopier and slightly less obnoxious. Take, for example, “FLOOR IS LAVA IN GROCERY STORE! (we got banned)” or “5 MILLION PIECES OF POPCORN ON TRAMPOLINE!”
Frequently, the Dobres will recruit their mom to be on camera. Naturally, Aurelia participates in the videos involving gymnastics. Here she is on the balance beam en route to becoming the first Romanian woman to win the world all-around title in 1987.
And here’s Aurelia performing routines with her sons in retail stores:
All of what made Aurelia stand out as a gymnast—her flexibility, her extension, her perfect technique—can still be seen in these videos 30 years after she won the world title.
Marcus and Lucas are only two of the four Dobre kids. There’s also Darius, as well as Cyrus, who competed on the University of Iowa’s men’s gymnastics team. They’re all very active on social media.
Though the Dobre kids might have built up the online following to become popular, for my money, Mama Dobre’s tricks are better than her sons’ antics.