Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been married for eight years, but one incident early in their courtship nearly ended their romance before it began. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex started dating in 2016, and both have spoken about their first date at London's Soho House in the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan and the duke's memoir, Spare.
A Late Arrival and Sparse Texts
In the book, Harry admitted he was running 30 minutes late and was not communicating often enough with his future wife, which he said would be "surely irritating" for her. He wrote: "I apologised: 'Horrible traffic.' Her reply: 'OK' I told myself: She might leave. I told my bodyguards: She's gonna leave. As we inched towards the restaurant I texted again: 'Moving, but still slow'. 'Can't you just get out?' How to explain? No, I couldn't."
Meghan's Doubts Before the Meeting
In the Netflix docuseries, Meghan gave her own account of the delay. She said: "I just couldn't understand why he would be late. And I didn't know him. So I was like, is this what he does? This I'm not doing. Like one of the guys who had so much of an ego that any girl would sit around and wait for a half hour for you."
However, the rocky start was quickly forgiven the moment Harry arrived. When a heavily flustered Harry finally turned up, hot, sweaty and apologising after being stuck in London traffic, Meghan's assumptions were shattered. She told her husband: "You were genuinely so embarrassed and late... you were a red hot sweaty mess."
