On June 15, 2024, the world was watching as Catherine, Princess of Wales, triumphantly returned to the spotlight during the Trooping the Colour ceremony. After months of speculation regarding her health, and the announcement of her cancer diagnosis, a regal Catherine took to the balcony of Buckingham Palace with her husband, Prince William and their children Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis. As the crowd cheered, Catherine gave a grinning William a radiant smile, and a photo of the tender moment was published around the world.

The mature, glamorous couple that stood on the balcony was miles away from the casual, carefree college students who were first snapped on the Swiss ski slopes of Klosters 20 years ago, but the ease, love, and mutual respect in evidence has remained the same.

Prince William first met Kate Middleton in 2001, when they were both first-year students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. “I actually went bright red when I met you and scuttled off feeling very shy,” Catherine said to William in their first joint interview.

The two art history majors (Prince William would later switch to geography), both sporty and rather shy, soon formed a tight friendship. “We did become very close friends from quite early on,” Catherine recalled. They also had a lot of fun. “Kate’s got a really naughty sense of humor, which kind of helps me because I’ve got a really dry sense of humor, so it was good fun,” William said.

In March 2002, the press—and reportedly, Prince William—took notice of Catherine as she strutted down the catwalk as part of a charity fashion show. “The British press has been keeping an eye on classmate Kate Middleton, 21, ever since she modeled in a see-through dress for a charity fashion show at St. Andrews,” the Daily News noted in 2004.

For their second year, the platonic friends, who had both dated other people, decided to share a flat with their fellow classmates Fergus Boyd and Olivia Bleasdale. The next year, they moved to Belgrove House, a charming cottage outside of Edinburgh. Catherine was occasionally mentioned as one of Prince William’s gaggle of chums. In 2002, the Daily Mail quoted a friend as saying, “[Kate] is a very lovely girl, but very unassuming. She’s very bubbly, but also very discreet and loyal to William.”

For his part, the bashful prince attempted to protect all of his female friends from the glare of publicity. “There’s a lot of speculation about every single girl I’m with and it does quite irritate me,” he said in 2003. “The more so because it’s a complete pain for the girls. These poor girls, you know, who I’ve either just met and get photographed with, or they’re friends of mine, suddenly get thrown into the limelight and their parents get rung up and so on. It’s a little unfair on them really.”

“Only the mad girls chase me, I think,” he joked. “I’ve never been aware of anyone chasing me, but if they were, could they please leave their telephone number?”

However, sometime in the fall of 2003, William and Catherine reportedly fell in love and became an item. As the rumor of a royal romance swept St. Andrews, the couple were discreet, never holding hands on campus and telling very few friends. But one night at a party, William’s ex-girlfriend Carly Massy-Birch called out the obvious during the drinking game “Never Have I Ever.” One friend recalled the incident in Vanity Fair royal correspondent Katie Nicholl’s The Making of a Royal Romance:

“When it was Carly’s turn to play she announced, ‘I’ve never dated two people in this room,’ knowing full well that William was the only one who had because Kate was sitting next to him. “He shot Carly a thunderous look and said under his breath, ‘I can’t believe you just said that,’ before drinking his shot. Kate didn’t speak to Carly much after that, but we were in shock. We knew they were together, but it was the first time William confirmed his and Kate’s relationship in public.”

For William and Kate, living together at Belgrove House offered a secluded and romantic setting to fall in love. “When it was warm enough, they would pack a picnic hamper and spend pleasant afternoons stretched out on a blanket sharing a bottle of chilled white wine,” Nicholl writes, “an occasional pheasant their only company.”

They also became partners in running a household, giving dinner parties (William immediately installed a Champagne refrigerator), and decorating their little home. “William and Catherine were now embracing their newfound independence, handling chores like shopping, cooking, and entertaining guests together,” Robert Jobson writes in Catherine, the Princess of Wales. “These salad days were idyllic, filled with romantic walks and quiet evenings together, shielded from the prying eyes of the press.”

Protected by a privacy deal brokered between the Palace and press after the death of Princess Diana, they also did normal college kid stuff: drinking and watching football at college bars like Ma Bells, attending apartment parties and dancing at festivals. In March 2004, Catherine joined William on a hunt in North Yorkshire, where they continued to protect their relationship. “They were really oh so very careful,” one friend recalled, per Jobson. “Afterwards, when everyone else went for a meal, they’d disappeared.”

But this love bubble would be shattered the next month. At the end of March, Catherine joined Prince William, Prince Harry, and the then Prince Charles on a skiing holiday in Klosters, Switzerland. Long a favorite spot of the royal family, it was particularly beloved by Prince Charles who had been visiting since the 1970s. Catherine had reportedly already hung out with the royal family at Highgrove and Sandringham House and frequented William’s small cottage on the Balmoral Estate.

She was part of a large party of friends, which included Guy Pelly, Hugh van Cutsem, and Katie James. Perhaps the Palace thought there was safety in numbers and that the gaggle of royal photographers and paparazzi descending on Klosters would just see Catherine as one of the crowd. As critics noted, the usually careful William was openly close to Catherine on the slopes, helping her into a ski lift and looking very much besotted.

On April 1, 2004, The Sun published a five-page spread of Kate and William on the Klosters’ slopes. The cover story, “Finally…Wills Gets a Girl,” was picked up worldwide. In the accompanying article, The Sun claimed Kate was William’s “first serious girlfriend,” and soon everyone was clamoring to know about the “shy pretty unassuming girl” who had captured the heart of the world’s number one bachelor. Prince William was reportedly furious at the intrusion. Since Princess Diana’s death, the press had made good on their deal with the Palace: Prince Harry and Prince William would be left alone to live their private lives, as long as they were made available for regular official photo-calls. But freelance photographer Jason Fraser (known for his long-lens photos of Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed in the last weeks before their death) had known the photos were too explosive to hide, and The Sun agreed.

Clarence House immediately sprang into action. “We’re very unhappy with the breach of the agreement and the use of the paparazzi pictures,” communications secretary Paddy Harverson stated. “I’m asking newspapers to continue to abide by the agreement. It is not our policy to discuss the nature of Prince William’s relationships with his friends. There may be speculation about other women he is photographed with, and we are not going to get into a debate about the nature of his relationships.”

Interestingly, Clarence House did not deny the relationship, as royal representatives had done in the past. Even Catherine’s father, Michael Middleton, played dumb regarding his daughter’s love life. “They are together all the time because they are the best of pals and, yes, cameramen are going to get photos of them together,” he said. “But there is nothing more to it than that. We are very amused at the thought of being in-laws to Prince William, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

Retribution was swift, and The Sun’s famous photographer Arthur Edwards was banned from future photo-calls with the princes even though he had nothing to do with the incident. The Sun swiftly came to Edwards’s defense and released a defiant statement:

Now that [William] is a mature adult, there is public interest in knowing what romantic interests might be developing in the prince’s life. One of William’s girlfriends could become queen one day. Her subjects will be entitled to know all about her… Our story about Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton is 100 percent true. Therefore, there is a strong public interest in publishing these delightful photographs.

Kate Middleton was now officially a public commodity. She immediately got a taste of what the future would hold when, just days after The Sun’s spread, rumors circulated that News of the World had topless photos of her. Luckily, this was just a smoke screen, used by editors to disguise a real scoop about David Beckham and his reported affairs.

Ironically, as the press touted “Klosters Kate” as William’s serious girlfriend, the couple were drifting apart, with William reportedly feeling “claustrophobic.” “They stopped going out a while back,” a source told The Daily Telegraph. “Some of his friends reckon it was just because he wanted some time on his own, but I think Kate was starting to feel the pressure as well.”

During the summer of 2004, William embarked on a series of vacations with his buddies and was linked with other women. Catherine spent the summer working, modeling for the preppy country brand Really Wild Clothing and leaning on her mother, Carole, for support. She also went to Paris with her friends, where the usually tight-lipped undergrad opened up.

“She had not told them about the trial separation, but from her downcast mood, her friends guessed, and one evening, she confided to them that she and William were taking a break,” Nicholl writes. “‘She was debating whether or not she should text or call him. She got quite drunk on white wine and really let her guard down,’ recalled one of the group. ‘She said how sad she was and how much she was missing William, but she never mentioned it after that.’”

But love found a way, and by the fall of 2004, they were back at St. Andrews and back to being roommates in every sense. William had found a picture-perfect partner, the woman who would stand by his side and gracefully endure the endless flashes of photographers’ cameras for decades to come.