King Charles Dunked on William and Kate’s Relationship Timeline Hours After Their Engagement Announcement
Prince William and Kate Middleton are going on 13 years of marriage. Yes, 13 years. Back when they became engaged in 2010, even the now-King Charles III cracked a joke about the couple dating for so long before heading for the altar. What the king said about how the Prince and Princess of Wales’s engagement made him “feel.” Plus, why a royal expert considers the years William and Kate’s spent dating a good thing for them and the British royal family.
William and Kate announced their engagement in November 2010 after nearly 10 years together
On Nov. 16, 2010, William and Kate let the world in on their recently changed relationship status: engaged. The pair posed for cameras at St. James’s Palace after Clarence House made the official announcement.
The late Princess Diana’s diamond and sapphire ring now sat on Kate’s finger after William proposed on a vacation in Kenya just weeks before. Nearly a decade earlier, they’d been students at Scotland’s University of St. Andrews. Sparks were there, but it wasn’t until later that the pair began dating, save for a brief split in 2007.
William and Kate went on to get married at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011.
Charles joked William and Kate had already ‘been practicing for long enough’ following their engagement announcement
The father of the groom, King Charles, commented on William and Kate’s engagement on the same day as the announcement. Visiting Poundbury in Dorset, England, as part of the Duchy of Cornwall, the then-Prince of Wales met with local residents. There, he was asked to share his reaction to the news.
“I’m obviously thrilled, thank you very much,” King Charles told journalists (via Newsweek). He didn’t stop there. The king continued, saying, “They’ve been practicing for long enough … it makes me feel very old.”
Perhaps a well-meaning ribbing toward his son and soon-to-be daughter-in-law, King Charles’s joke made an apparent connection to Kate’s ‘Waity Katie’ nickname given to her by the British tabloid press.
William cited ‘timing’ as a reason for proposing to Kate in 2010
In their engagement interview, William explained why they’d chosen to get engaged after nearly 10 years of dating.
“We were 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 all about timing,” he said. “I had my military career, and I really wanted to concentrate on my flying. I couldn’t have done this if I was still doing my training.” Finally, with it “out of the way” and Kate “in a good place” professionally, they “decided now was a really good time.”
William also shared that beyond “timing,” he didn’t want to rush marriage because it allowed Kate the “chance to see in and to back out if she needed to before it all got too much.”
Since then, author and royal expert Katie Nicholl said William and Kate’s years together before marriage proved “fundamental” for Kate’s success as a royal. The reason: “It gave Kate the time to … really understand what royal life was going to be like and actually [decide] if it was what she wanted.”
