Prince William and Kate Were "Like Any Boyfriend and Girlfriend

(Image credit: Getty)

published 5 October 2022

Prince William and now-Princess Kate met in university, and dated for close to a decade before their royal wedding in 2011. And future king though William might have been, apparently they were a super normal young couple in their early years.

When asked what they were like when they first started dating, former royal butler Grant Harrold told Slingo (opens in new tab), "Oh, like any boyfriend and girlfriend. Not any different to anyone else, it’s mad saying that when you think about who they are, but there wasn’t anything different."

Harrold explained that Catherine was especially down-to-earth, and he sounds like he thought the world of her.

"What I liked was that Kate, being a girlfriend and obviously not a member of the family, would be with me and the other staff and she was so polite, friendly, and fun and making jokes," he recalled.

"I remember there were days I had off where I’d be running an errand or I’d left something up at Highgrove [House] and they were around, so you’d just catch up with them."

The former butler spent a great deal of time with the royals, and was even a go-to person for William, he explained.

"It was always fun and it was always nice that I got on so well with them because they’d then ask me to travel the country with them," he continued.

"When my phone used to go off and it was William, all my friends would be like, 'that’s so cool,' but to me it was normal. That was the relationship I had with them.

"I think it was really special and not unusual, actually, because in a private home you’re expected to get on with the family. As for the younger members of the family, you’re not employed by them, but you end up having a relationship with them as well. There’s very few people that the royals actually get to know, so you do feel lucky that you were trusted with that."

It sounds like not much has changed when it comes to William's attitude to his staff: Marie Claire recently reported that the Prince of Wales prefers his house team not to stand on formality and to wear their casual clothes instead, to keep things as normal as possible for George, Charlotte and Louis.

Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Bustle and Shape. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.