11 Revelations from Kate Middleton and Prince William’s Engagement Interview

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.

The couple shared how the proposal happened

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.

William didn’t ask Kate’s father for her hand in marriage

“I was torn between asking Kate’s dad first and then the realization that he might actually say ‘no’ dawned upon me,” William said of Kate’s father, Michael Middleton. “So I thought if I ask Kate first, then he can’t really say no. So I did it that way ‘round. I managed to speak to Mike soon after it happened really, and then it sort of happened from there.”

The couple spoke about the famously tight-knit Middleton family of five — Kate, her father Michael, mother Carole and younger siblings Pippa and James. “Kate’s got a very, very close family,” William said. “I get on really well with them, and I’m very lucky that they’ve been so supportive. Mike and Carole have been really loving and caring and really fun and have been really welcoming towards me, so I’ve felt really a part of the family and I hope that Kate’s felt the same with my family.”

“They’ve been great over the years, helping me with difficult times,” Kate added of her family. “We see a lot of each other and they are very, very dear to me.”

Of starting a family of their own someday, Kate said, “I hope we will be able to have a happy family ourselves.”

They shared their origin story

William said the two met “a long time ago now,” as first-year students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

“We were friends for over a year first and it just sort of blossomed from then on,” he added. “We just spent more time with each other, had a good giggle, had lots of fun and realized we shared the same interests and just had a really good time.”

“I actually think I went bright red when I met you and sort of scuttled off, feeling very shy about meeting you,” Kate added. “Actually, William wasn’t there for quite a bit of the time initially, he wasn’t there for Freshers Week, so it did take a bit of time for us to get to know each other, but we did become very close friends from quite early on.”

“When I first met Kate, I knew there was something very special about her,” William said. “I knew there was possibly something that I wanted to explore there. But we ended up being friends for a while and that was a good foundation.”

William clarified that when they became roommates in their second year at university, “we moved in together as friends. Because we were living together, we lived with a couple of others as well, it just sort of blossomed from there really. We just saw more of each other, hung out a bit more and did stuff.”

The two even bonded in the kitchen, as “he did cook for me quite a bit at university, and it would always come with a bit of angst and a bit of anger if something had gone wrong and I would have to wander in and save something that was going,” Kate said.

“I would say I’m getting better at cooking. Kate would say I’m getting a lot worse,” William added, with Kate replying, “I don’t give him enough chance to practice.”

“No, that is true. I get quite lazy about cooking, because when I come back from work it is the last thing I want to do, really is spend loads of time cooking,” William said. “When I was trying to impress Kate, I was trying to cook these amazing fancy dinners, and what would happen was I would burn something, something would overspill, something would catch on fire and she would be sitting in the background just trying to help, and basically taking control of the whole situation, so I was quite glad she was there at the time.”

Of being friends first before falling in love, “I do generally believe now that being friends with one another is a massive advantage,” William said. “It just went from there. I knew over the years, I knew that things were getting better and better and we went through a few stumbling blocks as every relationship does, but we picked ourselves up and carried on. From where you had the odd problem when you are first getting to know each other, those have all gone and it is just really easy being with each other.”

He jokingly added, “It is really fun and I’m extremely funny and she loves that, so it’s been good.”

William and Kate showed their senses of humor — and poked fun at one another

William said he was attracted to Kate’s “really naughty sense of humor, which kind of helps me because I’ve got a really dry sense of humor, so it was good fun, we had a really good laugh and then things happened.”

When asked about rumors that Kate had a poster of William on her wall, the heir to the throne joked, “There wasn’t just one, there was about 20.”

“He wishes,” Kate retorted. “No, I had the Levis guy on my wall, not a picture of William, sorry,” to which William said, “It was me in Levis, obviously.”

Kate detailed meeting the former Prince Charles and Queen Elizabeth for the first time

Meeting the parents — or grandparents, for that matter — can be nerve-wracking even if, you know, your boyfriend’s father isn’t the future king and his grandmother isn’t Queen Elizabeth. Kate said, “I was quite nervous about meeting William’s father, but no, he was very, very welcoming, very friendly, it couldn’t have gone easier really for me.”

Of the late Queen, “I first met her at Peter and Autumn’s wedding, and again it was in amongst a lot of other guests, and she was very friendly,” Kate said of meeting the monarch at William’s cousin Peter Phillips’ 2008 wedding to Autumn Kelly.

“She was very welcoming, she knew it was a big day and everything was going on with Peter and Autumn,” William added. “She had wanted to meet Kate for a while, so it was very nice for her to come over and say hello. We had a little chat and got on very well.”

They addressed their 2007 breakup

“To be honest, I wouldn’t believe everything you read in the paper, but in that particular instance we did split up for a bit,” William said of their brief 2007 split. “We were both very young, it was at university, we were both finding ourselves as such and being different characters and stuff, it was very much trying to find our own way and we were growing up, it was a bit of space and a bit of things like that and it worked out for the better.”

Kate added, “I think at the time I wasn’t very happy about it, but actually it made me a stronger person, you find out things about yourself that maybe you hadn’t realized. I think you can get quite consumed by a relationship when you are younger, and I really valued that time for me as well, although I didn’t think it at the time.”

William shared why he waited so long to propose

The press paid ample attention to how long William waited to propose, to which he said in the interview, “We’ve [been] planning it for at least a year if not longer. It was just finding the right time, and that’s what most people say about couples, it’s just about timing.”

“I had my military career and I really wanted to concentrate on my flying and I couldn’t have done this if I was still doing my training, so I’ve got that out of the way and Kate’s in a good place in terms of work and where she wants to be, and we both just decided now was a really good time,” he continued.

He also said he wanted to look out for both Kate and her family, telling Bradby that “I want to make sure they have the best guidance and the chance to see what life has been like or what life is like in the family. That’s kind of almost why I have been waiting this long. I wanted to give her a chance to see in and to back out if she needed to before it all got too much. I’m trying to learn from lessons done in the past, and I just wanted to give her the best chance to settle in and to see what happens on the other side.”

“I’m also glad that I’ve had the time to sort of grow and understand myself more as well so hopefully do good job,” Kate responded. 

Of any negative press attention, she added, “I think the people around home are very supportive to us, and those are the people who really matter to us, our close friends and close family. And I think if they feel you are doing the right thing, you can only be true to yourself, and you sort of have to ignore a lot of what’s said. Obviously take it on board, but you have to be yourself really, and that’s how I have stuck by it.”

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Kate’s preparations for her future role as a royal were already underway

“It’s obviously nerve-wracking, because I don’t know the ropes really,” Kate said of life as a member of the royal family. “William is obviously used to it, but I’m willing to learn quickly and work hard.”

“I really hope I can make a difference, even in the smallest way. I am looking forward to helping as much as I can,” she said of becoming a working royal.

The couple were “massively excited,” William said, joking that he’d be “quite happy when the interview’s over.”

“But no, we are hugely excited, and we are looking forward to spending the rest of our lives together and seeing what the future holds,” William said.