Pat Valentine was six years old when he found out he was getting a little brother.
“It was the most exciting thing ever,” he says now, and the way he says it — without hesitation, without the performed warmth you sometimes hear from people talking about siblings for cameras — suggests the feeling has never really left.
Zach arrived in August 2000, born in Downey, California, diagnosed with Down syndrome early. Pat was old enough to understand the word, young enough not to let it change anything. Growing up, Pat was deliberate about who he let in. If someone couldn’t see his brother clearly — if they led with the diagnosis instead of the person — they didn’t make the cut. “I was very picky with the friends I chose,” he has said. “If they didn’t see my brother in this positive light… I didn’t want them in my life.”
This was not nobility. This was Pat Valentine at 10, 12, 15, drawing a line in the sand around his best friend and daring anyone to cross it.
The internet would eventually reward that instinct with 8 million followers. But that comes later.
October 2019
The channel launched on October 1st, 2019, the first day of Down Syndrome Awareness Month. The timing was intentional. Zach had been lobbying for this for years. He had always wanted to do social media for a living — watching YouTubers, mapping it out, telling Pat: you and I, we’re gonna do this. Pat and their mother sat down and talked about how to share Zach with the world, because they believed he had something worth sharing: a unique story, a beautiful heart, a way of being in a room that made people feel something.
The third video broke everything open. Pat had just come home from college. Zach didn’t know. When Pat walked through the door, Zach ran to him and wrapped his arms around him — a moment of complete, uncalculated joy. They posted it. It hit 5 million views on TikTok.
It wasn’t a strategy. It wasn’t produced. It was just true.
What They’re Actually Doing
Spend time in the @valentinebrothers feed and the first thing you notice is that nothing is explained. There are no explainer cards, no educational overlays, no “here’s what Down syndrome means” title cards. Zach eats food, pulls pranks, reacts to things, sings. Pat is usually laughing. Their most-viewed video — over 35 million views — is just them, being them.
That’s the editorial choice, even if they’d never call it that. Growing up, people had negative perceptions — “he can’t do things” or “he’s just a person with Down syndrome, he’s not going to amount to much in life.” The content is the argument against that. Not a counter-argument. Just evidence, uploaded twice a week, accumulating.
They answer user-submitted questions about Down syndrome, but they also just show daily life — shenanigans, family, trips, food. The two things are not separated. Zach having Down syndrome is part of the day, not a special segment within it.
Pat holds a master’s degree in education. Before the cameras, before the follower counts, his plan was to work at a university helping students with disabilities navigate accommodation systems — the quiet, structural work of inclusion. Social media happened instead, at a scale neither of them anticipated. But the degree tells you something about how he thinks about what they’re building. This has never been casual for him.
Hollywood, December 2024
TikTok’s first US awards ceremony was held in Hollywood. La La Anthony hosted. Keith Lee won Creator of the Year. Paris Hilton took Muse of the Year. And when it came time for the For Good Award — the honor recognizing activism — it went to Zach and Pat Valentine.
Their videos didn’t chase virality; they fostered community, visibility, and empathy. That was TikTok’s read. In the room that night, Josh Richards presented the award. Zach stood on stage while Pat spoke. The moment circulated widely afterward — people trying to parse it, read into it, make it mean something. The Valentine brothers have never needed help making their moments mean something. They just needed people to look.
PULL QUOTE (for designer) “Zach always shows me the importance of being yourself. You have a beautiful heart — and all of you have a beautiful heart.” — Pat Valentine
SECTION HEADER: What Pat Actually Wants You to Know
Ask him what his followers don’t know and he reaches for the master’s degree — not as a credential, but as context. He wanted to spend his career building access for people who needed it, on a systems level, one university at a time. Now he does it on a platform level, one video at a time, at a reach no university department could match.
The two things are not as different as they sound. Both require the same belief: that the way you present a person determines how other people treat them. That representation is infrastructure.
“You matter,” Pat says, when asked what he’d tell their followers. “Your story matters. You are uniquely you. So keep being you, because everyone else is taken.”
It’s a line he’s said before. It lands every time because he means it every time, and because Zach — standing next to him, or running toward him, or singing to himself in the background — is the proof.
Zach Valentine is 25 now. He has a dog. He still adds things to Amazon he can’t check out on his own. He still sings. Pat is 32, still the older brother, still picking his friends carefully, still in the frame.
They are from Yucaipa, California. They started in a living room. They have 8 million followers and a TikTok award and a most-viewed video with 35 million plays. None of it has changed the basic thing, which is that Pat came home from college one day and Zach ran to him.
That video is still on the page. Go watch it. You’ll understand everything.
SOCIAL HANDLES : TikTok: @valentinebrothers Instagram: @valentinebrothers YouTube: @valentinebrothers Facebook: @valentinebross
Watch their full interview here!