Meet the roller-skating duo touching hearts one video at a time
It’s the fun pick-me-up you didn’t know you needed.
Meet Marcus Griffin, 33, and Michael Griffin, 36, the duo from Delaware who are known simply as The Griffin Brothers. The Griffins are sharing their love of roller skating and music with strangers online and their synchronized skating videos are curated to throwback hits like Haddaway’s “What Is Love” and Bee Gees’ “Night Fever.”
So far, they’ve racked up millions of views on social media, garnering 2 million likes on TikTok and over 250,000 followers on Instagram so far.
But they say they don’t do it for the fame.
“As soon as you step on the floor, like, you ascend into another dimension and I think that's where the love comes from now,” Marcus Griffin, who works as a truck driver, told “Good Morning America.” “It's not even about us anymore. It's about our supporters and the comments and the messages we get from people.”
Social media users often comment on their video posts.
“Having a bad day, saw this and y’all just put a smile on my face!” wrote one Instagram user.
“I love starting my mornings with so much positive energy from you guys!” another commented on TikTok.
The videos are a nostalgic blast from the past featuring the brothers in matching or coordinating outfits and some say they’ve been inspired to learn to skate or get back to the roller rink themselves after watching the clips.
“We're bringing back those old feelings that people had when they used to go skating, when they didn't have to worry about the bills, the houses, everything,” Marcus Griffin said. “When they watch us, they get a certain joy in themselves, what they felt when they were younger, like when times were good, no pandemic, no mass shootings, no nothing. They don't think about that.”
The brothers fell in love with skating as young boys and inherited their passion for the pastime from their mother.
“Mom was actually the original skater. She used to go when she was younger. Her mom used to drop her off at the rink and she would stay all night. So she did the exact same thing with us,” Marcus Griffin said. “We would do it every Friday and Saturday and we just always been in love from day one, nonstop.”
Amid the pandemic, Marcus Griffin noticed that an old skating video of him and his brother started to pick up thousands of views on YouTube and quickly told his older brother that they had to start recording again.
“He kept telling me get my skates, get my skates, get my skates. And so my niece, his daughter, finally had a birthday party. And they had it at the skating rink and I had put rentals on and I'm like, ‘OK, let me just do this,’” Michael Griffin recalled. “So I got back to skating again. And it was so fun. I was like, Why did I stop skating? Why did I stop skating? And the love just came right back and then we finally made a video last year."
The brothers usually skate at Christiana Skating Center in Newark, Delaware. They choose the songs they want to skate to beforehand and wait till the end of the night when the skating rink clears out, connect one of their phones to the DJ booth and ask their friend, Damon Hudson, to film them as they do high kicks, dance and glide to the beat.
“We just want to bring joy and happiness to everybody who lays eyes on this,” Marcus Griffin said.
“One video has about 13 million views so I posted in our story, and then somebody messages saying, ‘Oh, my three-year-old has 3 million views by themselves.’ It's just awesome. So two- and three-year-olds can watch us over and over. That's how I know that's real joy right there that we’re bringing into the world. That's all we want to do.”
