Next month, on May 19, Meghan Markle will finally have her happily ever after as she weds Prince Harry.
But this pretty brunette has had her fair share of relationships beforehand, kissing a few frogs along the way.
So who did Ms Markle date before she met her ginger-haired prince and why did the relationships not last?
According to royal reporter Andrew Morton’s explosive tell-all Meghan: The Hollywood Princess, one of her previous matches didn’t suit her partying lifestyle, while her ex-husband failed to share her ambitions. And the man she dated before she met Harry simply couldn’t give her the time she needed.
In the end, it was only a prince who could win the heart of this strong-willed star. Here, New Idea uncovers her past loves and looks into the real Meghan Markle – before she met her fairytale knight in shining armour…
Her first boyfriend
According to Andrew, her first longterm boyfriend was Luis Segura.
‘In time-honoured fashion, it was his sister Maria who set them up on their first date, the couple seeing one another regularly for nearly two years.
She got to know the Segura family well, including Luis’ younger brother Danny, who played Creon in Oedipus Rex, and always credits Meghan, who was then 16, with encouraging him to take to the stage,’ he says.
Now a real-estate agent, Luis describes her as ‘sweet and fun’, and according to Andrew, he was ‘no doubt one of a number of voices encouraging her to enter the contest for St Francis Homecoming Queen.’
Her Prom date
It was Giancarlo Boccato who accompanied Meghan to the Junior-Senior Immaculate Heart school prom in April 1999. According to Andrew: ‘Meghan and her beau, Giancarlo Boccato, now a New York property manager, looked a very glamorous couple as they danced cheek to cheek. They were, as photographer John Dlugolecki observed, “a star couple”.’
The college boyfriend
According to Andrew, normally Meghan went for well-dressed Latin boys like Luis Segura, but she changed gears at Northwestern.
‘Her first boyfriend was Steve Lepore, a chiselled, white, six-foot-five- inch [195cm] sophomore basketball player from Ohio. He made Meghan, at five foot six inches [168cm], feel petite. Her association with Lepore raised her stock with her KKG sorority sisters, who were “impressed that she had snared such a hottie”.’
‘They made quite the pair,’ recalled a former classmate.
‘But their relationship was shortlived. While they made a perfectlooking college couple, they had their differences. Steve’s sporting ambitions meant that he had to forgo partying, turn in early, and the night before any game Meghan was not welcome to stay over.’
Meghan, on the other hand, ‘was a party animal at the time, who enjoyed the freedom college offered away from her parents, drinking and staying out late’.
The first husband
Over six feet tall (182cm) with reddish-blond hair and blue eyes, Trevor Engelson looked like a surfer or volleyball player – an archetypal Californian golden boy.
‘He had the tone and the air of a Matthew McConaughey Lite, although he was born and raised in Great Neck, New York, the son of a successful orthodontist and great-grandson of Jewish immigrants,’ says Andrew.
‘When Meghan first met him on that night out in West Hollywood, she liked what she saw, attracted to his passion, his drive and ambition. Trevor was a typical New Yorker: brash, blunt, no bull and ballsy. When the pair got together,
‘Trevor took her to a beach resort in the Central American country of Belize for a holiday.
‘It was there, amid the tropical greenery and the soothing waves, that he asked his girlfriend of six years to be his bride, slipping a princess-cut diamond solitaire onto her finger. Meghan was thrilled.’
‘They were both googly-eyed for one another,’ recalls a friend.
‘They were very much in love.’
But it was not long before cracks began appearing in their marriage.
‘What once endeared, now irritated. Meghan, a self-confessed perfectionist who was as fastidious as she was controlling, had tolerated Trevor’s scattered approach to life for years,’ explains Andrew.
While Meghan saw her star rising, her husband’s career was treading water, and in 2013, the marriage came to an sudden end.
‘A wealthy entrepreneur friend claimed that the marriage ended so abruptly that Meghan sent Trevor her diamond wedding and engagement rings back to him by registered mail.
Another confirmed that the decision to end the marriage was made by Meghan and that it had come “totally out of the blue.”’
The rebound
After the marriage with Trevor finally ended, handsome celebrity chef Cory Vitiello was next on Meghan’s list.
‘Over the past seven years, Vitiello had made a name for himself both in and out of the kitchen. He had famously dated Canadian heiress and former politician Belinda Stronach, as well as eTalk’s talking head Tanya Kim, before turning his attention to Canadian TV gossip reporter Mary Kitchen,’ says Andrew.
‘They were a very handsome pair and well suited, but you got the impression it was a sometimes superficial relationship,’ an insider told the Daily Mail.
‘Cory was always very focused on his job and his work. In that respect, they both put their careers first. The relationship came second.’
According to the publication, the actress lived with Cory in a townhouse in Toronto and was ‘going through a tough time’ with him when Prince Harry ‘besieged her with texts until she agreed to a date’.
For the full story see this weeks issue of New Idea – out now!
