Facts About Meghan Markle’s Life Before She Met Prince Harry

She was a self-described California girl.

Her parents, Doria Ragland and Thomas Markle, divorced when she was 6, and Meghan lived with her mom, a yoga instructor and social worker, after the separation. Meghan has two half-siblings from her dad’s previous marriage, but didn’t see them much as they were more than a decade older than her.

Meghan Markle got into TV early on.

Her dad worked as an Emmy award-winning lighting director, and he often would bring his youngest daughter to the set. Meghan attended the private, all-girls Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles, so the experience definitely contrasted with her education.

“Every day after school for 10 years, I was on the set of Married … with Children, which is a really funny and perverse place for a little girl in a Catholic school uniform to grow up,” she told Esquire in 2013. “There were a lot of times my dad would say, ‘Meg, why don’t you go and help with the craft services room over there? This is just a little off-color for your 11-year-old eyes.'”

Meghan Markle was a feminist from an early age.

At age 11, Meghan was working on a homework assignment about commercials when she heard a Ivory dishwashing soap ad aimed solely at women. “I don’t think it’s right for kids to grow up thinking these things, that just mom does everything,” she said at the time.

Meghan’s dad encouraged her to write to the most powerful people she could think of, including company representatives, Hillary Clinton, Gloria Allred, and Nick News anchor Linda Ellerbee. It worked: Procter & Gamble changed the slogan from “Women all over America” to “People all over America” a few days later.

She was a “theater nerd” at Northwestern University.

Meghan says she always wanted to act, but “hated the idea of being this cliché — a girl from L.A. who decides to be an actress.” She ended up double-majoring in theater and international relations at the prestigious school in Evanston, Illinois, but she remembers her experience as being pretty typical.

Besides joining the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma, she also frequented the students’ favorite late-night eats spot. “The 24-hour Burger King also definitely helped me put on the Freshman Fifteen,” she told a campus magazine during a 2014 visit.

She was on “Deal or No Deal” — but she hated it.

Although she booked her first audition while still in college, Meghan dealt with the turbulence of the industry just like anyone else. She told Marie Claire she did a pilot every season before Suits. While auditioning for shows, she once worked as a briefcase girl on the game showDeal or No Deal. 

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“I was the ill-fated number 26, which for some reason no one would ever choose,” she told Esquire in 2013. “I would end up standing up there forever in these terribly uncomfortable and inexpensive five-inch heels just waiting for someone to pick my number so I could go and sit down.”

She made extra money doing calligraphy.

This side gig she actually liked. “I think handwritten notes are a lost art form,” she told Good Housekeeping in 2016. Apparently she “always had a propensity for getting the cursive down pretty well” and managed to book jobs like Robin Thicke and Paula Patton’s wedding invitations and Dolce & Gabbana’s celebrity holiday correspondence.

Canada became her second home.

When Suits got picked up, her role as paralegal Rachel Zane helped vault Meghan’s star status. Since the filming took place in Toronto, she spent about eight months of the year in Canada — hence why she’s called herself an “adopted Canuck.”

The actress rented a modest three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in the Seaton Village neighborhood during her time there, and became friends with Toronto “royalty.” Her circle included power couple Jessica and Ben Mulroney, the former a fashion adviser to Justin Trudeau’s wife and the latter the son of a former PM himself.

Her “Suits” cast members used to hang out all night.

Meghan told Esquirethat everyone was really close, spending holiday weekends at Patrick J. Adams’s vacation home on the Georgian Bay. “Off-camera, there we are just playing Apples to Apples and drinking Scotch into the wee hours of the night,” she added.

One of her favorite shows was “Mad Men.”

When she wasn’t on TV, she liked watching it as much as the rest of us. Back in 2013, she counted the Jon Hamm drama, Girls, and The Newsroom as part of her must list.

She was a total foodie.

Meghan has dubbed herself a foodie in multiple interviews, even writing a blog post dedicated to her favorite dishes. On the list? Green juice, fish tacos, chicken adobo, cioppino, and kale chips. The home chef also loves “an Ina Garten–level roasted-chicken recipe.” It’s rumored that’s what she made with Prince Harry when he proposed!

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Her Vitamix went with her everywhere.

This is a girl who loves her blender. “When I had my car brought out [to Canada], I shipped my Vitamix in the backseat. It was one of the things where I was like I cannot travel without my Vitamix,” she told Esquire. “It’s like a commercial at this point. But I use it every day for pestos or shakes.”

And she LOVED wine.

“At the end of a long day, there is nothing I enjoy more than a glass of wine,” Meghan wrote on a Today blog post. “I used to be of the ‘it doesn’t matter, so long as it’s red’ persuasion, but then I grew up, and so did my palate.” The vino drinker even named her now-defunct lifestyle blog The Tig after the red wine Tignanello.

She designed clothes on the side.

Meghan kept up with a number of jobs. Besides covering travel, food, fashion, and beauty on The Tig, the busy career woman also had a side hustle with Reitmans, putting out a collection with the Canadian clothing store.

Meghan Markle BFFs included Serena Williams and Priyanka Chopra.

Before she met Prince Harry for the first time in July 2016, Meghan already had some very famous friends. In addition to hanging out with Toronto elite, she befriended the tennis legend at DirecTV’s Celebrity Beach Bowl in 2014.

They “hit it off immediately, taking pictures, laughing through the flag football game we were both playing in, and chatting not about tennis or acting, but about all the good, old-fashioned girly stuff,” she wrote on the Tig, Buzzfeedreports. “She quickly became a confidante I would text when I was traveling, the friend I would rally around for her tennis matches, and the down-to-earth chick I was able to grab lunch with.”

Many men before Prince Harry tried to woo her

According to rumors, English football player Ashley Cole was desperate to date Meghan back in the day. Meghan was reportedly warned by friends that Ashley was a bit of a womanizer, so she decided “leave it alone.”