Beef's Steven Yeun Pays Sweet Tribute to His Wife Joana in Golden Globes Speech: 'You Are My Strength'

Beef's Steven Yeun won big at the Golden Globes 2024 — and made sure to thank those closest to him!

The actor won his first Golden Globe award for best actor in best limited series, anthology series or motion picture made for television during Sunday's ceremony. With the win, Yeun beat out Fellow Travelers actor Matt Bomer, Lawmen: Bass Reeves star David Oyelowo, Fargo's Jon Hamm, Daisy Jones & The Six's Sam Claflin, and White House Plumbers' lead Woody Harrelson for the prestigious honor.

While accepting his award, Yeun, 40, sweetly called out his wife Joana Pak, calling her his "strength."

"The story I usually tell of myself, to myself, is one of isolation and separateness and then you come up here and you have this moment, and you can only just think about everyone else and that feels like the plot of Frozen," he said. "Shoutout to my daughter Ruthie, family movie night!"

"I'm just so thankful. I'm just the recipient of a long line of compassion and love and protection and goodwill, so I appreciate this," he continued before thanking his wife. "Joana, I love you. You are my strength."

Yeun concluded his speech by thanking the cast and crew of his Netflix series.

In Beef, Yeun plays Danny Cho, a man whose repressed anger is unleashed after he finds himself in a road rage scenario with Ali Wong's character. In the event's aftermath, Beef's twosome find their lives intertwined in unexpected ways.

This is the first Golden Globe nomination for Yeun, who previously received critical acclaim for his performance as the father of a Korean American family in the 2020 film Minari.

Yeun was up against some stiff competition for this year's award.

Bomer, 46, plays a closeted gay man entangled in a decades-long love affair in the Showtime limited series Fellow Travelers, which he also executive produced.

Adapted from Thomas Mallon's novel of the same name, the show follows Bomer and Jonathan Bailey's characters as they navigate their complex relationship from the 1950s Joseph McCarthy communist trials to the 1980s AIDS crisis.

This year's Golden Globes nomination was Bomer's second; the actor previously received a nod for his portrayal of Felix Turner in 2014's The Normal Heart.

In Daisy Jones & The Six, Claflin, 37, is Billy Dunne, a recovering addict and the frontman of the band caught up in a love triangle involving Riley Keough's Daisy and Dunne's wife Camila, played by Camila Morrone.

This is Claflin's first Golden Globes nomination.

Starring opposite Juno Temple in Fargo, Hamm, 52, makes an indelible impression in the role of North Dakota Sheriff Roy Tillman, "a man who works from sunup to sundown shepherding God's land" and who prides himself not just in be being "the law," but also being "above the law."

This is Hamm's seventh Golden Globe nomination; he previously won twice — in 2008 and 2016 — for best actor in a TV drama for his portrayal of Don Draper in Mad Men.

In HBO's limited series, Harrelson plays E. Howard Hunt, one-half of the duo hired by the White House to stop leaks in 1972. Hunt and his partner G. Gordon Liddy, played by Justin Theroux, incompetence leads to them being caught while trying to break into the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate — a scandal that eventually led to President Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974.

This is the fifth Golden Globes nomination for Harrelson, 62, who previously received nods for his performances in HBO's True Detective, the 2012 HBO film Game Change, 2009's war drama The Messenger and 1996's The People vs. Larry Flynt.

Playing the first Black U.S. deputy marshal west of the Mississippi River in Paramount+'s Lawmen: Bass Reeves was a dream more than eight years in the making for Oyelowo, 47, who also executive-produced the series withYellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan.

“We are going for a true historical representation, which is rare,” Oyelowo told PEOPLE ahead of production. “People don’t know that one in four cowboys back then were Black and that the Lone Ranger was basically a story that was ripped from Bass Reeves’s life.”

For the series, Oyelowo trained in horse riding and firearms to play the man who arrested more than 3,000 criminals in the 1800s: “He had a long career with so many legendary stories. That’s what’s exciting.” 

This is Oyelowo's third Golden Globes nomination; he earned nods in 2015 for Selma and 2016 for Nightengale.

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See PEOPLE's full coverage of the 81st annual Golden Globes as they're broadcasting live from The Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles on CBS and Paramount+.