Breaking News: 11 of the Best Revelations from Kate Middleton and Prince William’s 2010 Engagement Interview — 14 Years Ago Today…. Read More

The college sweethearts — now married for over 13 years — let the world in on their love story in a lengthy ITV interview on Nov. 16, 2010

It was 14 years ago today that the world got its first true glimpse of Prince William and Kate Middleton as a couple in their first joint interview.

On Nov. 16, 2010, the couple announced their engagement and would go on to marry five months later on April 29, 2011 at Westminster Abbey. On Kate’s left ring finger was the iconic sapphire and diamond engagement ring that once belonged to Princess Diana, who died on Aug. 31, 1997 after a car accident in Paris. Kate wore a blue Issa wrap dress — which perfectly complemented the sapphire in her engagement ring — and the silk dress sold out after their engagement announcement, thereby kickstarting the “Kate Middleton effect,” which continues today.

In addition to a photocall, the couple — who met as college students at the University of St. Andrews nine years prior and were friends before falling in love — sat down for a nearly 18-minute interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby. It not only marked their first joint interview, but also their longest joint interview to date. In the 14 years since, the pair have welcomed three children, Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6; ramped up their roles as members of the royal family, going from Duke and Duchess of Cambridge after their 2011 wedding to Prince and Princess of Wales in September 2022 after the death of Queen Elizabeth; and, more recently, faced down Kate’s shocking cancer diagnosis earlier this year.

Take a look at some of the most compelling snippets from the couple’s engagement interview.

In the interview with Bradby, William shared that they’d gotten engaged “about three weeks ago on holiday in Kenya,” making the timeline roughly mid-October 2010.

“We had a little private time away together with some friends, and I just decided that it was the right time, really,” he said. “We had been talking about marriage for a while so it wasn’t a massively big surprise. I took her up somewhere nice in Kenya and I proposed.”

The future king added, “I’d been planning it for a while, but as any guy out there will know, it takes a certain amount of motivation to get yourself going. I was planning it and then it just felt really right out in Africa. It was beautiful at the time. I had done a little bit of planning to show my romantic side.”

Of his late mother’s engagement ring, “I had been carrying it around with me in my rucksack for about three weeks before that, and I literally would not let it go. Everywhere I went I was keeping hold of it, because I knew this thing, if it disappeared, I would be in a lot of trouble. And because I’d planned it, it went fine. You hear a lot of horror stories about proposing and things going horribly wrong — it went really, really well, and I was really pleased when she said yes.”

Kate was surprised when the proposal finally happened — and let slip that William was a ‘romantic’

Despite knowing one another since 2001 and dating since roughly 2002 or 2003 — including a short breakup in 2007 — Kate said she “really didn’t expect it at all.”

I thought he might have maybe thought about it but no,” she said of whether she saw the proposal coming. “It was a total shock when it came, and [I was] very excited.”

The proposal itself “was very romantic,” she said, laughing. “There’s a true romantic in there.”

William and Kate shared how they felt now that the world knew they were engaged

Keeping their engagement a secret for roughly three weeks was “quite difficult not telling anyone, keeping it to ourselves for reasons we had to,” William said. “And it’s really nice to finally be able to share it with everyone.”

“We’re like sort of ducks, very calm on the surface with little feet going under the water,” he added. “It’s been really exciting. We’ve been talking about it for a long time so for us, it’s a real relief and it’s really nice to be able to tell everybody.”

It was important to William to give Kate his mother’s ring

Princess Diana had been gone for 13 years when William proposed; he was just 15 years old when she died. Of the ring Kate now wore on her finger — the first time the public had seen the ring since Diana’s death — “It is a family ring, yes. It’s my mother’s engagement ring, so I thought it was quite nice because obviously she’s not going to be around to share any of the fun and excitement of it all,” William said. “This was my way of keeping her close to it all.”

Obviously I would have loved to have met her, and she’s obviously an inspirational woman to look up to,” Kate said later in the interview. “Obviously to this day and going forward and things, you know it is a wonderful family, the members who I’ve met have achieved a lot and very inspirational.”

William stressed that there was no pressure for Kate to be “the next Diana”: “There’s no pressure, because, like Kate said, it is about carving your own future. No one is trying to fill my mother’s shoes, what she did is fantastic. It’s about making your own future and your own destiny and Kate will do a very good job of that,” he said.