- Kate Middleton and Prince William didn't start dating until they were both students at the University of St. Andrews in the early 2000s, but a friend of Kate's from high school says the Duchess of Cambridge was crushing on her future husband long before they met in real life.
- Jessica Hay, who was one of Kate's dorm mates when she attended Marlborough boarding school, says Kate had a poster of Will in her dorm and would say things like, "There's no one quite like William."
- During her official engagement interview years later, Kate denied the story, but Will took Jessica's side with a joking confirmation that the poster was, in deed, of him.
You know how some love stories just seem like actual fate? Like the stars were all aligning before the people ever met? Like when Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise started dating and it came out that she had a huge crush on him when she was a teenager. Obviously that fairytale didn't pan out, but the idea of it was nice at the time.
Turns out, Kate Middleton and Prince William have a very similar teenage love-from-afar kind of story, except clearly with a happier ending and much less of an age gap.
In her book, Kate: The Future Queen, royal expert and biographer Katie Nicholl reveals that Jessica Hay, one of Kate's old dorm mates from her time away at boarding school outed her for having a big, fat Tiger Beat-y crush on her future husband back in the day. Nicholl wrote:
"'She would joke, 'There's no one quite like William.' She had a picture of him on her wall,' Miss Hay told the Mail on Sunday."
This story, naturally, got back to Kate, who officially denied it during her first interview as a future royal. Nicholl explains in her book that Kate didn't even join the other Will superfans on campus in trying to sneak an IRL peek at the royal when his school visited Marlborough for various events.
"Kate laughed off the story in her first-ever interview years later: 'No, I had the Levi's guy on my wall, not a picture of William.' Indeed, when William came to Marlborough for interschool events, Kate was more interested in playing hockey than waiting at the goal line on the hockey field above Wedgewood, where some of the girls congregated to gawp at the prince. Others would gather outside Mill Mead, where the buses parked, so they could chase after the boys as they drove off. But not Kate."
For the record, Will takes Jessica's side in this she-said/she-said debate. From their engagement interview:
William: She had 10 or 20 pictures of me up on her wall at university.
Kate: No, it was the Levi’s guy on my wall, not a picture of William. Sorry!
William: It was me in Levi’s.
Sorry, Kate, but we're Team "It Was Will in Levi's" now.
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