Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were keen to keep their romance on the down-low at the beginning – but how did they first meet?
The couple will celebrate their seventh wedding anniversary on May 19, 2025. The Sussexes tied the knot at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle on May 19 in 2018.
However, back in their early days of dating, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex kept their romance very lowkey and away from the media.
In the couple’s engagement interview in 2017, Meghan, 43, said the pair had enjoyed a “good five, six months almost with just privacy,” which she branded “amazing”.
How did Prince harry and Meghan Markle meet?
Harry and Meghan met in the summer of 2016. Speaking in their 2022 Netflix docuseries, Harry, 40, explained that he came across Meghan on Instagram through a friend’s account.
He then reached out to his friend to help arrange a meeting with Meghan. The couple met up in London for drinks, and then again the next evening for dinner. And the rest is history!
After that, in 2016, the couple were able to enjoy dates in private.
During their engagement interview in 2017, Prince Harry said he proposed during a “standard typical night” for them.
Meghan said it was a “cozy night” in which they were “roasting chicken”, seemingly revealing that’s how they spent a lot of nights.
Meghan on how she and Harry kept early days of romance private
Speaking about how they enjoyed months of privacy, Meghan added: “I think we were able to really have so much time just to connect. We never went longer than two weeks without seeing each other, even though we were obviously doing a long distance relationship.”
I think we were able to really have so much time just to connect.
Meanwhile, Harry revealed the couple secretly met in a London supermarket when they were dating.
Speaking on Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast in 2021, Harry said: “The first time Meghan and I met up for her to come and stay with me, we met up in a supermarket in London, pretending we didn’t know each other, so were texting each other from the other side of the aisles.”
Prince Harry ‘tried to stay incognito’ during supermarket date with Meghan
In addition, he added: “There’s people looking at me, giving me all these weird looks, and coming up to me and saying ‘hi’.
“I texted her saying ‘is this the right one?’ and she said, ‘no you want parchment paper’. I’m like, ‘where’s the parchment paper?!’
“It was nice, I had a baseball cap on, looking down at the floor, trying to stay incognito.”
The couple announced their engagement in 2017 and married on May 19, 2018, in St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.
However, just under two years later, the couple decided to step away from their senior royal duties. They moved to the US and now reside in Montecito, California.
The couple welcomed their first child, son Archie, in May 2019. They then became parents to their daughter, Princess Lilibet, in June 2021.
Now, following tell-all interviews and Harry’s 2023 bombshell memoir – in which Harry and Meghan made allegations about their negative experience within the monarchy – the pair have become estranged from the royal family with reported tensions between Harry and his father King Charles and brother Prince William.
But, in May 2025, Harry admitted he would love a “reconciliation” with his family.
