Royal Butler Spills on the ‘Special’ Dinner That Saved William & Kate’s Relationship: 'Something Changed'
In the years before their royal wedding as college sweethearts, Prince William and Kate Middleton built a relationship largely away from the spotlight. They studied together, vacationed with friends, and, like any young couple, weathered their share of challenges. One of those was their brief but widely reported breakup in 2007. When they found their way back to each other, those close to them noticed a shift. One moment in particular stands out as proof that the couple had moved into a new phase and were dead serious about each other.
Grant Harrold, who worked as a royal butler at Highgrove, King Charles’s Gloucestershire home, recalls organizing a rare formal dinner for William and Middleton on Valentine’s Day in 2008 — their first after reuniting. “They never had dinner in the dining room and preferred to take it on trays,” Harrold explains in his new memoir, The Royal Butler: My Remarkable Life in Royal Service. “As their first butler, I wanted them to have dinner where I served them properly in the dining room. I’d been suggesting this for years, and they always laughed it off, saying they didn’t want any fuss. But then, one day, out of the blue, he suddenly said, ‘Okay, let’s do dinner, if you’re happy to.’”
That dinner happened to fall on February 14. Harrold claims it was "the first time the young couple had been able to enjoy such a romantic meal" since reconciling. The timing made it all the more poignant. “After their breakup, they seemed closer than ever,” he writes.
Speaking to InStyle, Harrold admitted he was “desperate to do this for them” because he felt it was something of a milestone. “I don’t ever want to leave and not have had the opportunity of doing a proper dinner, because they didn’t like formality,” he recalled. “I used to offer all the bloody time.” Though he often oversaw casual dinners for William, Middleton, and friends, this was the first intimate occasion for just the two of them. That in itself was significant. “I think it was also, in fairness to them, it’s a trust thing as well,” Harrold noted.
Seventeen years on, the butler admits he can’t recall the exact menu, though he’s fairly sure chicken was involved. What he remembers instead are the sweet details that made the evening so personal. “It was lovely because it was just them, and what was really nice, because they were having a very open conversation with each other, lovey dovey, as you can imagine [with] Valentine’s and all this kind of thing — William actually did some finishing touches. I can’t remember exactly what, but I know he’d done finishing touches. Now, whether it was little love hearts or whatever, he did do finishing touches to the table. So he’s a romantic.”
Harrold also described how he could sense the shift in William and Middleton’s relationship. “Before that dinner, they weren’t [really] holding hands—it was very much William’s friend,” he wrote. “After that, when they got back together, it absolutely changed, and it was very much them as a couple. Something changed, and you knew they were a couple, and from then on, it was very much a waiting game... After they got back together, I was convinced they would get married.” The duo eventually got married in 2011.