How did other royal couples meet?
Philippe and Mathilde
Albert and Paola
Astrid and Lorenz
Philippe and Mathilde never revealed how they met, so it is not exactly known: it was speculated they met playing tennis, while according to other sources, Philippe first became acquainted with Mathilde's younger sister Marie-Alix, who later introduced him to Mathilde. There'a a
picture, in any case, showing Philippe and Marie-Alix together in 1995. Marie-Alix sadly died in a car accident in August 1997, aged 22, along with her maternal grandmother.
Albert and Paola met during a reception at the Belgian Embassy to the Holy See, organised to celebrate Pope John XXIII's coronation, in early November 1958 (exactly 65 years ago). They talked about it in an interview in 2014 (first minutes of
this video. A few days later, here's
one of their first pictures
Astrid and Lorenz (as revealed by Astrid in an
interview in 2012) met for the very first time in 1978 at a reception for the 25th wedding anniversary of Jean and Joséphine-Charlotte of Luxembourg, and later got to know each other better through a maternal cousin of Astrid, who knew well both of them and was convinced they were made for each other
