Prince William first met Kate Middleton when they attended St. Andrew’s University in Scotland in 2002. They started out as friends by all accounts, but eventually a spark was ignited at a charity function.

While they didn’t officially meet until college, their paths did cross when Kate Middleton was a child and her school hosted 9-year-old Prince William’s school for a hockey game. In the biography Kate: The Future Queen, Katie Nicholl wrote, “Although [Kate] wasn’t especially interested in boys, the arrival of one particular young man had caught her attention.”

The pair still weren’t fully an item until their second year of university when they shared an apartment with two other friends. “We moved in together as friends because we were living together, we lived with a couple of others as well,” Prince William told the BBC in 2010, “and it just sort of blossomed from there really.”

In 2006, Prince William and Kate Middleton were doing their best to keep their relationship low-key. But the paparazzi were following her everywhere. This led to the royal family assigning a 24-hour security detail paid from the Royalty and Diplomatic Protection Department... a clear sign that things were getting serious.

In 2007, the couple broke up for a brief period of time. Kate would later say during their engagement interview with the BBC that she was glad of the time apart. “You can get consumed by a relationship when you’re younger and I really valued that time for me as well, although I didn’t think it at the time,” she said. They were back on within a few months.

The young couple dated for several years, and during that time, Prince William was attending Sandhurst Military Academy. As for the duchess, she worked several jobs in the retail and fashion industries, including as an assistant accessories buyer for Jigsaw as well as working for her family’s party supply company, Party Pieces.

The British tabloids dubbed Kate Middleton “Waity Katie” when the couple had been dating for several years and there was still no engagement ring.

Prince William admitted in an interview in 2020 that one of the least romantic gifts he gave Kate when they were first dating was a pair of binoculars. “She’s never let me forget that,” he said.

After seven years of dating, Prince William proposed to Kate during a holiday in Kenya. She said in an interview with the BBC, “There’s a true romantic in there,” about Prince William’s proposal.

Prince Harry inherited his mother Princess Diana’s engagement ring, but gave it to Prince William as a gift so that Kate could one day wear it on the throne.

Prince William and Kate’s wedding day in April 2011 was watched by millions, and one of the sweetest moments was when they broke with tradition to kiss twice on the balcony at Buckingham Palace.

The Duke of Cambridge surprised his new wife in 2011 with a romantic trip to Seychelles, an island country off the coast of Africa.

Kate’s early years of marriage and motherhood to Prince George, who was born in 2013, were spent living in North Wales. At the time, Prince William was working as an air ambulance pilot for the Royal Air Force, and the duchess was seen often picking up groceries at the local Tesco.

She recalled her early years as a mom living in North Wales as “isolated” and “lonely” in 2020 during a visit to Ely and Caerau Children’s Centre in Cardiff, Wales, telling the center: “It was the first year and I’d just had George — William was still working with Search and Rescue and we came up here and I had a tiny tiny baby in the middle of Anglesey. It was so isolated, so cut off.”

Kate might seem incredibly confident now, but she told the BBC during their engagement interview that the first time she met her husband at college, she turned “bright red when I met you and sort of scuttled off, feeling very shy about meeting you.”

Prince William’s nickname for his wife is “poppet,” while she has been heard calling him “babe,” according to Her.ie. How cute is that?

Both the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are sporty people, and they love to compete against each other. They have frequently sailed against each other in regattas on official duty and tend to look their most relaxed while in competition. Whatever floats your boat.

During an interview on Radio 1 in 2019, Prince William admitted that he and his wife liked to kick back and watch television after they put their three kids to bed. What do they watch? “We’ve watched Homeland, big fans of Homeland. Game of Thrones we’ve watched as well. Seems like everyone has watched Game of Thrones.”

As a royal couple, both Kate and Prince William are involved in many charities. But in 2017, they realized that there was a “common thread” throughout all of their charities: mental health awareness. And so they partnered with Prince Harry on Heads Together, an organization dedicated to ending the stigma of mental health issues. It seemed to really bring them together as well.

In 2019, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge cooked with Mary Berry for the holiday special A Berry Royal Christmas, and Kate told the Great British Bake-Off host that her husband used his cooking skills to impress her in their early days. “In [our] university days he used to cook all sorts of meals,” she admitted. “I think that was when he was trying to impress me, Mary. Things like Bolognese sauces and things like that.”

In February, Kate was asked during a video call what her “greatest support” during the COVID-19 lockdown had been, and she wrote on a piece of paper just one word: “William.”