Joey Graziadei Crowned DWTS Champion, Making History in the Process

And the Mirrorball goes to…

Dancing with the Stars season 33 finally named a winner on Tuesday, Nov. 26, following eight, exciting weeks of competition.

Former NFL pro Danny Amendola and Witney Carson, Bachelorette Joey Graziadei and Jenna Johnson, actress Chandler Kinney and Brandon Armstrong, Olympic rugby player Ilona Maher and Alan Bersten, and Olympic gymnast Stephen Nedoroscik and Rylee Arnold entered the finale all hoping to walk away winners.

In the end, it was announced that Danny and Witney had placed fifth, Stephen and Rylee placed fourth, and Chandler and Brandon landed in third place.

This left Jenna and Joey and Ilona and Alan as the final two contenders.

Finally, in the last minutes of the finale, it was revealed that Joey and Jenna were the season 33 winners.

"It means everything, this whole experience has been unbelievable," Joey said after his win. "Thank you for bearing with us. I tried my best, I promise!"

Each couple performed a Freestyle with additional dancers, as well as a redemption dance. Joey, 29, and Jenna, 30, revisited a Cha Cha for their redemption dance, Danny, 39, and Witney, 31, went with a Tango and Stephen, 26, and Rylee, 19, opted for a Quickstep. Both Chandler, 24, and Brandon, 30, and Ilona, 28, and Alan, 30, performed a Jive for their Judges’ Redemption number.

By the end of the night, Joey and Jenna topped the leaderboard after a perfect redemption dance and a 29/30 on their freestyle.

Entering the evening, Joey and Jenna and Chandler and Brandon found themselves atop the leaderboard from the beginning of the season. Stephen and Rylee and Ilona and Alan were not far behind them. After a few weeks, Danny found his footing too, making him and Witney top contenders for the Mirrorball.

“We watch a lot of tape,” the ex-wide receiver told PEOPLE in October of how he and Witney improvedthroughout the season. “Honestly, it sounds like a football interview, but we watch a lot of film and we try to study other dancers — what they've done — and we try to tweak it ourselves a little bit and just put a good performance together on Tuesday night.”

All five couples made it to the finale after host Alfonso Ribeiro surprised them at the end of last week’s semifinals by announcing that no one would be going home.

Kinney told PEOPLE after the Nov. 20 show that she felt “shocked” and “grateful” for everyone to be moving on to the finale. “It's such a great group of people,” she said. “I think none of us here wanted any of us to go home. We were all just stoked for each other.”

Maher told PEOPLE she “wasn't sure if we were making it through” to the finale after the stiff competition.

“I didn't know how far we would get,” Bersten added. “The very first time we danced was a day before we went to New York for Good Morning America. We didn't really know what we were doing, but I did know that afterwards we went and got bagels and I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be fun.’”

Along with memorable dances and emotional moments on the dance floor, season 33 of Dancing with the Stars featured two possible love connections. Model Brooks Nader and her partner Gleb Savchenko had instant chemistry at the beginning of the season and kept dating after being eliminated on Oct. 15. Although Brooks, 27, shared that Gleb, 41, broke up with her via text later that month, the two have continued to spend time together and post with one another on social media.

Bachelorette Jenn Tran and her season 33 partner Sasha Farber also formed a close bond and have hung out often following their Oct. 29 elimination. The reality star, 27, even mentioned that they’d be moving in together.

“Right now I gotta find a place to live and that’s probably Sasha’s couch," Tran told Tish and Brandi Cyrus on the Nov. 14 episode of their podcast Sorry We're Cyrus.

Tran added that when she lives with the 40-year-old dance pro, “He’s going to make me cook and clean every day. I don't know how I feel about that, but I don’t have to pay rent.”

Both couples returned to the ballroom for the Nov. 26 finale, as did convicted scam artist Anna Delvey, who notoriously said she took away “nothing” from the show after being the first one out. In the finale, she poked fun at her comment by dancing to "I Have Nothing" by Whitney Houston.

“I really did not take away much from this experience,” Delvey, 33, said on the Sept. 28 episode of Tori Spelling’s misSPELLING podcast. “I think I had to be on the defensive, especially after all the backlash that I received being cast on the show, even though the producers [tried] to defend me. And I think everyone on the cast was generally very nice to me. But in the end, I don't know.”

Dancing with the Stars is streaming on Hulu.