To trumpet their online return, Miami comedy duo A Pair of Nuts created a hilarious bit about how their reunion after a 14-year hiatus came to be: Johnny Trabanco bumps into his former partner, Yamil Piedra, who claims he has no memory of this person. As Trabanco walks away dejected, Piedra is struck by lightning, and a highlight reel of their antics comes flooding back.
“I remember everything!” Piedra exclaims as the old friends shake hands for an awkwardly exaggerated amount of time to seal the deal.
The comments section was full of delighted followers, including local standup comic Luis Diaz, who wrote, “You guys ran so the rest of us could leisurely stroll.”
Piedra and Trabanco decided to give things a whirl again a few months ago for kicks and giggles, literally. In April, they began sharing both old and new clips (ahem, Reels) on Instagram, a platform that wasn’t even in existence when they were starting out.
“Established in 2003,” reads their bio. “NUTStalgia for old fans, fresh Nuts for the new.”
So, why now?
“After everything we accomplished we owed it to ourselves and more importantly to our fans to continue to do what we do best. Make people laugh,” Piedra (the tall, bald one) told the Miami Herald. “And now more than ever, the world needs it. And who better than to make it happen than us?”
The Nuts 2.0
In the early 2000s, A Pair of Nuts gained traction fairly quickly due to consistently uploading fresh, funny goodies (today known as “content”) on such platforms as now-defunct MySpace and a fledgling website called YouTube.
Their manic (in a good way) brains were running at hundreds of kilobits per second, churning out character after character. A lot of inspiration came from a joint love of iconic sketch comedy programs like “Kids in the Hall,” “Saturday Night Live” and “In Living Color.” They also watched their fair share of old “Abbott & Costello” and “Laurel & Hardy” movies.
One minute, you’d see them channeling the Goofuggles, unhinged hosts of a “Yo Gabba Gabba!” style kids’ program. The next they were onto the La La Brothers, irritating cover artists who butchered classic songs like Gloria Estefan’s “Conga.”
“We were viral when viral wasn’t even a thing, it wasn’t a word,” Piedra said. “And not on purpose. We were just doing our thing, using different mediums as a tool. There was a period where things were happening just so fast.”
Yamil Piedra and Johnny Trabanco as fake TV lawyers Facme & Diaz COURTESY A PAIR OF NUTS
The popularity of the silly, sometimes edgy skits spawned live shows all over the United States. The men traveled everywhere with bookings at clubs, colleges, even military bases. Not only were they writing all their stuff but doing their own makeup and costumes, found at Hialeah thrift-store mecca, Flamingo Plaza.
At the height of their fame, in the late 2000s, the festival- and club-circuit darlings hit the big time with appearances on “Last Call with Carson Daly” and “Tosh.0” on Comedy Central. In 2010, they snagged an Emmy for their work as Un Par de Locos on MegaTV’s “El Vacilón,” and were grand marshals at Coconut Grove’s famed King Mango Strut Parade.
Back for The Nuts 2.0 are several fan favorites like bumbling personal injury lawyers Facmee & Diaz, the kind you cringe at on late-night cable TV. Their latest video features Piedra and Trabanco speaking in monotone and dressed in tacky suits, enticing clients to sue over the summer’s dreaded lettuce parasite.
The parody is inspired by actual people on the boob tube.
“We used to watch those local terrible commercials late at night with the lawyers who have the fake law book library in the background who were obviously reading a script,” explained Trabanco. “They would speak really bad Spanish and say, ‘CALL US NOW.’ It cracked us up.”
And no Nuts comeback would be complete without the Gayo guys, the flamboyant pitchmen for fictional LGBTQ-themed products, like pink mayonnaise. And, for the modern era: A GLP-1 weight loss drug called “Gayzempic.” Piedra, 48, said they have always had a huge gay following.
“I’ve had people in the community come up to me and say Gayo helped them come out to their parents,” said Piedra. “It’s one of those things.”
The dawn of The Nuts
The Nuts’ shenanigans started when they were teenagers.
Piedra, a graduate of Immaculata-La Salle High, worked the register at the cafeteria at Trabanco’s high school, St. Brendan.
“I was always a big guy, and my weight would fluctuate,” admitted the Cuba native who emigrated to Hialeah at the age of 2. “Johhny would come by and antagonize me. He’s been antagonizing me since before we were Nuts!”
“I did!” Trabanco confirmed. “I couldn’t help it. He was super serious with eyebrows like The Rock. I called him The Big Fat Candyman.”
They ended up reconnecting at FIU in 1998 while in the same fraternity.
“We recognized each other,” Trabanco, who is from the Westchester area, explained. “I was like, ‘Oh, it’s the Big Fat Candyman!’”
“I thought, ‘This little guy is funny,’” said Piedra, who asked Trabanco to join his on- campus troupe, Impromedy, adding, “We had great chemistry.”
Their 2012 split wasn’t the result of drama, though. Real life was calling. Trabanco wanted to be more present for his now ex-wife and their two young daughters, so turned to a more “normal and safe” 9-5 grind, e.g. newspaper ad sales and construction.
“We were constantly on the road, all over the place from the Midwest to the Mojave Desert,” he recalled. “I would miss a lot of things.”
Piedra, who was getting engaged to his now wife, still had the bug to entertain. Beside some acting gigs, he paid the bills by using his video editing skills working for the Miami Heat for about a decade.
“For me, it was harder to let go and leave it behind,” said Piedra, whose resume includes parts in such hits shows as “Boston Legal” “Graceland,” Las Vegas” and “Burn Notice.” “
“It’s an addiction. I’ve been in the arts forever,” he said. “I just love the industry, in general. That’s also why I’ve always worn many hats.”
About those hats. Locals may recall him from a spot for Rana Furniture about a decade ago in which he plays a salesman who dances around the showroom after the store closes.
“It’s 2026 and people still stop me and go, ‘Hey, you’re the Rana Furniture guy!” Piedra said.
A Pair of Nuts, Johnny Trabanco, left, and Yamil Piedra, were grand marshals of the King Mango Strut parade in Coconut Grove in 2010 COURTESY A PAIR OF NUTS
After the Nuts went their separate ways, Piedra and Trabanco didn’t speak for more than a decade, despite living miles apart.
“It took a toll on our friendship,” admitted Piedra. “But he was definitely in my thoughts.”
“Every day I would have vivid dreams about Yamil,” added Trabanco. “A huge part of our lives was spent together.”
The catalyst to reunite ironically had nothing to do with new, irresistible material (they avoid politics!) but tragedy: Trabanco reached out after Piedra’s father died in 2019 of Alzheimer’s and attended the funeral. In 2024, when his grandmother passed, Piedra returned the favor.
“At the end of the day we were brothers … family to each other for a very long time,” said Piedra. “We didn’t want to let all this time pass and have any regrets. The things that happened, happened.”
As for future plans? Keep an eye on their page @apairofnutscomedy, which has blown up since their April announcement. Since the comeback, their Instagram Reels have reached more than 1 million accounts, generated over 1.7 million views, and been shared 273,000 plus times.
“All of that growth has been organic, with no paid boosts,” he said.
“Organic growth?,” “paid boosts?” — more phrases that weren’t in the vernacular when the Nuts were yukking it up back in the day and precisely why they might do just fine in their second chapter. They’re still kooky as ever, but evolved.
The Nuts attribute much of their past successes to experimenting with all kinds of jokes, in both English and Spanish.
“We try to make our comedy as general as possible, because if you put yourself in one category you’re limiting your reach,” said Piedra. “We are proud of being Latino, but want to connect with everyone.”
Miami Herald
Celebrity/real time news reporter Madeleine Marr has been with The Miami Herald since 2003. She has covered such features as travel, fashion and food. In 2007, she helped launch the newspaper’s daily People Page, attending red carpet events, awards ceremonies and press junkets; interviewing some of the biggest names in show business; and hosting her own online show. She is originally from New York City.