8 Celebrities Who Married Into Royalty Besides Meghan Markle

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The royals have been an exclusive lot for centuries. Very scarcely throughout history have blue-blooded clans allowed commoners to enter their fray, and even on the rare occasion that they did, it was often shrouded in controversy. But as times have progressed, making cross-cultural integration unavoidable in an increasingly globalized world, monarchies worldwide seem to have loosened their grip on stiff-necked traditions. Even within their dynastic realities, marriage between commoners and royals isn't unheard of anymore. 

Catherine, Princess of Wales, is perhaps the most famous recent example of a relatively unknown, ordinary citizen marrying into royalty. But such commoner-to-princess cases also exist in which the royal newcomer was already privy to a high degree of celebrity before earning aristocratic fame. Meghan Markle probably stands out as the most frequently cited name in this regard. But the global royal record from the past few decades is full of celebrities who came to enjoy royal distinction in addition to their already famous identities. 

All the way from Greece to Monaco and Sweden, models, actors, socialites, and other public figures have entered the royal fold after excelling in their fields. While these transitions haven't always been smooth — with some celebrities being compelled to give up their careers or fight through salacious rumors to make their marriages work — they have made for royal lore for the ages. 

Grace Kelly was already nothing short of royalty before becoming the Princess of Monaco. An icon of Hollywood's golden age, she reigned over the film industry in the early 1950s, worked with cinema legends like Alfred Hitchcock, won an Oscar, and cemented her place as one of the most important stars of the 20th century. And she did all that (and more) in just about five odd years of working as a screen actor. 

From where Kelly stood at the time, there was only upward to go, and cinema would have been richer for it. But life had other plans. Kelly was in attendance at the Cannes Film Festival in 1955, when she was set up for a meeting with Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, at his palace. Though a magazine photo op prompted their encounter, the nature of the visit turned when Kelly and Rainier III took a liking to each other. 

Thus began a secret courtship that culminated in a grand wedding in 1956, with Kelly officially bowing out of Hollywood to join Monaco's royal family (the untold truth) as a princess. Throughout her 26-year tenure, the "Rear Window" star became one of the foremost ambassadors of Monaco and worked tirelessly as a philanthropist, notably founding a nonprofit to support children's welfare. Her life was tragically cut short in 1982 after she was involved in a deadly car crash in the Côte d'Azur and had a hemorrhage.

Rita Hayworth was a trendsetter in more ways than one, holding the distinction of being the first American celebrity to marry into royalty. She had already blazed a trail through Hollywood by the time she chanced upon her fourth husband. An enduring Golden Age diva, Hayworth got an early start in showbiz. However, she truly began climbing the charts in the 1940s, finding her niche as a pinup model and a classic cinema femme fatale with films like "Gilda." 

It was also during that decade of stardom that she first crossed paths with Prince Aly Khan, who came from a line of Islamic leadership and was married at the time. Neither circumstance discouraged him from pursuing the Hollywood icon, whom he successfully wooed – much to the disapproval of the world's high and mighty, including the Vatican. They ended their respective marriages to tie the knot in 1949. 

Though Prince Aly Khan didn't inherit his father's Aga Khan title — which would have made him the spiritual figurehead of Islam's Shia Ismaili sect — his lifestyle wasn't devoid of any royal excesses. As Barbara Leaming wrote in 1989's "If This Was Happiness: A Biography of Rita Hayworth," the New York native struggled to find her footing in Europe's über-elite, always buzzing, often straitjacketed royal society away from her world of films and glamor. Her husband's philandering tendencies didn't help her situation, and in 1951, Hayworth upped and returned home. The couple divorced soon after. 

In what was perhaps the most unforeseen of all modern royal fairytales — quite literally, since their union wasn't mainstream knowledge up until their engagement was announced a few months before the wedding — model Kendra Spears and Prince Rahim Aga Khan V tied the knot in a traditional Muslim ceremony in 2013. Celebrations took place in the serene setting of Geneva, Switzerland, the birthplace of the prince, who belongs to a line of imams heading the Shia Ismaili branch of Islam. 

By then, Spears was already successful in fashion and, with just a few years of work, had added the likes of Chanel, Versace, and Gucci to her ramp-walking resume. She had also racked up an honorable reputation as "Little Cindy," owing in part to a mole on her upper lip that likened her to supermodel Cindy Crawford, but also presumably signaled her industry potential. She had joked to W Magazine  in 2009: "I'm just waiting for my Pepsi contract!" 

But as wasn't entirely unexpected, Spears had to trade her career for a new title: Princess Salwa Aga Khan. Beyond the birth of their two sons, little was known about the trajectory of the royal couple's ultra-private marriage over the years until reports claimed they had divorced in 2022. After being away from the spotlight for nearly a decade, Spears made a show-stopping return to public life by walking the ramp for Chanel at Paris Fashion Week in 2025. 

Those who were around and conscious in the early 2000s will probably remember Sofia Kristina Hellqvist as a polarizing model and reality television star — instead of knowing her solely by her current identity as the not-so-average royal Princess Sofia, Duchess of Värmland. Before she married Prince Carl Philip in 2015, Hellqvist was out and about on global glamor circuits, all the way from her home country of Sweden to the United States.

One of her earliest, and most controversial, claims to fame was a photo op for the Swedish magazine Slitz, in which Hellqvist posed topless with a boa constrictor writhing across her chest. She gained further notoriety as a participant on the reality show "Paradise Hotel" and for allegedly sharing a kiss with former adult star Jenna Jameson. When she met the son of King Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia in 2009, she was apparently aware that her colorful record might pose a problem. 

"From the beginning, there was a struggle for Sofia to be accepted," Swedish royal reporter Margareta Gotthardsson told People. "She has told the press that she and the prince tried to fall out of love with each other since they knew that it would be a struggle for them when her background was revealed." The Swedish royal family, meanwhile, maintained a different narrative, with Prince Carl Philip claiming that his family was inclusive of Hellqvist (via The Local). In any case, the two lovebirds triumphed and continue to live out their happily ever after. 

Long before she became a household name in Hollywood, Olivia Wilde starred in a modern-day fairytale of her own making. In 2003, when she was still trying to find her footing as an actor, the actor-filmmaker tied the knot with Tao Ruspoli, an Italian prince she had been seeing for a few months at the time. She was 19 when the duo was away at Burning Man and, consistent with the spirit of the countercultural festival, made a spur-of-the-moment decision to say their "I dos." 

"The paperwork was done back in Los Angeles with a man who I think we found on the internet," Wilde recalled on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast. "It seemed like probably the craziest thing to do, and it was so romantic and insane ... We did not have a very traditional marriage. It was very bohemian." While those ideas seemed contrarian to royal society, their wild lifestyle worked, considering that Ruspoli was only a prince in name. 

Famous as the son of Alessandro Ruspoli, 9th Prince of Cerveteri — a fixture of Italy's elite society with an aristocratic lineage going back centuries — the younger Ruspoli grew up in unorthodox cosmopolitan settings largely removed from his royal background. In fact, he was starting out as a filmmaker living in an empty school bus in California when he crossed paths with Wilde. Their whirlwind marriage ended amicably in 2011, with the two continuing as friends even today. 

Unlike several of her commoner-to-royal contemporaries, Charlene Wittstock didn't make her transition into aristocracy from the glamor world. Her global renown stemmed from her status as a swimming Olympian who notably represented South Africa at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Her athletic resume also includes a silver medal at the Commonwealth Games, alongside a stockpile of golds from the All-Africa Games. In fact, it was at one of her swimming competitions that Wittstock met her real-life prince. 

In 2000, Wittstock was participating in the Mare Nostrum meet in Monaco, where she won two gold medals. Felicitating her on the occasion was none other than Albert II, Prince of Monaco. As the story goes, though, their love story didn't take off just then. It was only when they reconnected years later that a romance truly blossomed, culminating in their grand three-day royal wedding in 2011, which added the title of "Princess of Monaco" to Wittstock's already formidable portfolio. 

Though it seemed like a fairytale come to life, Prince Albert and Princess Charlene's story has been marred with rumors from the get-go. The most persistent ones have been about the princess' alleged resistance to the marriage, which prompted her to plan an escape from Monaco before the big day. This bombshell claim coincided with tabloid speculation around the prince's supposed infidelity and the existence of a third child born out of wedlock — beyond the two Prince Albert had already acknowledged by then. 

A Hollywood rom-com rarely ever unfolds in real life as perfectly as it did for Princess Keisha Omilana and Prince Adekunle Adebayo Omilana, who bumped into each other on the streets of New York City. And as if he was reading right out of a script, Prince Kunle, as he is popularly known, approached the model, saying: "You are the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my entire life. Would you do me the honor of having your number? I'd love to take you out" (via Business Insider). 

Though she initially turned him down and walked ahead a few steps, something beckoned her back to the spot and urged her to give the man a chance. A love story unfolded, but not without the typical twists of a rom-com plot. For two years of their relationship, Prince Kunle apparently kept his royal identity on the down-low; the three-time Pantene muse only came to know of his heritage as a prince of Nigeria's Arigbabuowo ruling house while visiting his mother. 

"She said, 'you are my princess,'" Princess Keisha recalled, thinking at the time that it was only a term of endearment. She formally adopted the title when she married Prince Kunle in 2006. The pair have since welcomed two children and lived around the world, away from traditional royal life. Contrary to the buttoned-up existence of many contemporary princesses, Princess Keisha continues to pursue modeling projects and entrepreneurial opportunities independent of her conferred status. 

Before the Paris Hiltons and Kendall Jenners of the world took over the "it girl" tag, that distinction famously belonged to the Miller sisters in the '90s. Pia, Marie-Chantal, and Alexandra — daughters of duty-free business magnate Robert Warren Miller — were fixtures on the elite socialite circuit the world over, enjoying the high life from Hong Kong to London and New York. 

Their family fortunes sure gave them a golden head start, but the sisters jacked up their glamorous reputations even higher by marrying into blinding wealth. Marie-Chantal Miller, most notably, became the Crown Princess of Greece through her marriage to Pavlos, Crown Prince of Greece, in 1995. As would famously happen with another royal couple years later — we're looking at you, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry – Miller and the prince were set up on a blind date by a mutual friend. 

The billionaire heiress recalled to Vanity Fair how she was initially apprehensive about the linkup and even tried to wriggle out of it, until she came face to face with her future husband: "And we clicked. It was love at first sight. I knew that he was the person I would marry ... I bring all this energy, and he gives me all this calm." In what can be counted among the most romantic royal proposals, Crown Prince Pavlos popped the question to Miller on a ski lift in Switzerland. The couple went on to welcome five children together.