King Charles couldn’t help but gush over his son Prince William’s sweet proposal to Kate Middleton during his and wife Queen Camilla’s five-day trip to Kenya.
In a speech Thursday, the King conveyed just how special Kenya is to the royal family, revealing details about the Prince and Princess of Wales’s engagement.
“It was here, in sight of Mount Kenya, that my son, the Prince of Wales, proposed to his wife, now my beloved daughter-in-law,” Charles said at a state banquet.
William famously popped the all-important question to Kate on Oct. 20, 2010.
However unlike most proposals, this one was not a surprise for the couple as planning for it had been in the works for some time, according to reports.
The pair had been dating for eight years prior to the engagement, and first met during their respective stints at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland in 2001.
But news of their engagement only became public knowledge on Nov. 16, 2010.
During a joint sit-down interview, Kate said that William asking for her hand in marriage came as a surprise to her.
“It was a total shock when it came,” she said at the time. “There’s a true romantic in there.”
William, for his part, added, “As every guy out there will know, it takes a certain amount of motivation to get yourself going. So I was planning it and then it just felt really right out in Africa. It was beautiful.”
The diamond sparkler given to Kate by William belonged to his late mother, Princess Diana.
“Obviously, she’s not going be around to share in all the fun and excitement, so this is my way of keeping her close to it all,” William said of his late mother, who died in 1997.
In Jan. 2020, William spoke about his decision to propose to Kate in Kenya.
“The African continent holds a very special place in my heart,” he said. “It is the place my father took my brother and me shortly after our mother died.”
“And when deciding where best to propose to Catherine, I could think of no more fitting place than Kenya to get down on one knee,” he added.
The couple wed in a lavish ceremony at Westminster Abbey on April 29, 2011.
They went on to welcome three children: Prince George, 10, Princess Charlotte, 8, and Prince Louis, 5.
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