Viral Video Turns 26-Year-Old Into One of Denver's Most Eligible Bachelors Thanks to Friend's Playful Pitch (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Luke Marcelle (left) and Sierra Covington.Photo:courtesy of Sierra Covington and Luke Marcelle

courtesy of Sierra Covington and Luke Marcelle

One day you’re the only single guy at a Denver friendsgiving, and the nextyou have thousands of TikTokersinterested in going out with you.

So it goes for Sierra Covington’s friend Luke Marcelle, who became the viral star of her recent post, with 2 million views and counting.

“I asked Luke: ‘How would you feel if I put you up on TikTok as a dating thing?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, it couldn’t hurt,’ ” Covington, 30, tells PEOPLE. “We put it up immediately and it got a lot more traction than we were expecting.”

She wrote up some quick text to go along with a brief clip of Marcelle.

“I know the dating scene in Denver is tough. My friend Luke is single and is an absolute ray of sunshine," she wrote. “Cat dad, Italian man who cooks. And the kindest soul.”

Sierra Covington’s video about friend Luke Marcelle.sierrastyless/Tiktok

sierrastyless/Tiktok

Soon, hundreds of people from all over the world started commenting on theeight-second Nov. 16 videoshowing him smiling with a plate full of Thanksgiving yumminess.

“When she asked, I thought maybe a couple hundred, 2,000 people at most would see it,” Marcelle, 26, tells PEOPLE. “What’s the harm? I didn’t even have a TikTok.”

By Friday, more than 4,800 users had commented on the post, with light-hearted responses ranging from “is this item still available?” to people in Australia, Germany and Italy wondering about “international shipping costs.”

But quite a few seemed dead serious about meeting up with Marcelle. Even Covington’s family weighed in.

“Two of my sisters saw the video and didn’t realize I was the one who posted,” she says, adding that one sister wondered why she didn’t think closer to home. (Covington’s answer: “I was like — because you’re still in California. I’m hoping for a girl in Denver.”)

Covington says one commentator who has known Marcelle for five years even attested to his character, sharing how he once drove 30 minutes to get her Chick-fil-A because she was sad.

“That’s just the kind of guy he is,” Covington says. “He’s so sweet.”

Luke Marcelle.courtesy of Sierra Covington and Luke Marcelle

Marcelle, a college grad who works for Enterprise Truck Rental, is affably taking it in stride. He says he’s gone on two dates in the past week and hopes to do more — but might take Thanksgiving off because he’s spending the day skiing with friends.

And also because dating is an expense he wasn’t expecting.

“My personal budgeting did not have 2 million views on TikTok set aside for this,” he jokes.

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He says a lot of women have been reaching out on TikTok to Covington directly, and she’s been processing the applications and passing along the ones that she thinks are best to him.

“I’ve also just gotten random follows on Instagram with a DM of like, ‘Hey, I saw this TikTok. Here’s my quick little elevator pitch about me,’ ” Marcelle says.

Obviously, he says, they don’t know much about him either.

Luke Marcelle with his cat, Doc.courtesy of Sierra Covington and Luke Marcelle

“They raise money each year for men’s mental and physical health initiatives and are breaking the stigma around men asking for help,” says Marcelle, who grows a mustache for the cause.

And if those things don’t make him date material, he adds that he loves to listen to others.

“One of my favorite things to do is just meet people and hear their stories,” he says. “It’s been fun just to get out as opposed to dating apps.”

For inquisitive date-seekers, Marcelle, who is also a Buffalo Bills fan, says he enjoys someone who is passionate, thoughtful, caring, kind, loving and has good values when it comes to their family and friends. He says he’s close to his parents and his two older siblings.

As for his favorite “date question,” he says he always asks about the other person’s dream job.

“My dream job would be to own my own record store someday,” he says. “My dad got me into vinyl at a very young age, and I can just spend hours upon hours in a record store flipping through them.”

The Albany, N.Y., native moved to Denver a little more than a year ago, having visited after graduating from Bentley University outside of Boston, in 2020.

“There wasn’t much going on in terms of starting a job in the corporate world at that time,” he says. “So one of my college best friends, Nigel, and I rented a camper van and hit the road for two weeks.”

They loved Colorado so much that they decided to move there. Nigel Reiff moved out first, with Marcelle driving out from Boston in a U-Haul about a year later.

Denver pals, from left to right, Sierra Covington, Hannah Armitage, Quinn Cheyney, Kira Wirsig, Luke Marcelle and Nigel Reiff.courtesy of Sierra Covington and Luke Marcelle

He says his friends got into relationships, but he stayed single.

“I haven’t done a whole lot of dating myself because it wasn’t something I was really moving out here with the idea of doing,” Marcelle says. “I just wanted to get a change of pace and scenery and do all the outdoors activities that Colorado is known for.”

But he’s well aware that a lot of people are starting to get invested in his dating saga, commenting that they want to see video updates from Covington on his romantic life — culminating, they hope, in his eventual marriage.

“I’ve seen a lot of people commenting that ‘TikTok better bring [me] back for the wedding,’ ” Marcelle says. “We’ll see how it goes.”

source: people.com