place your family has been going for the last how many years, there s a clear sign that he s saying to everybody, this is the girl in my life. reporter: newspapers ran with the story. headlines like this, finally, wills gets a girl. for the first time, the palace didn t deny the romance. the couple would retreat behind the protective walls of st. andrews. for the next year, they continued to live together, now without other roommates. they quietly spent more time with the royal family, and it became clear to many that despite her common upbringing kate fit in, perhaps even better than princess diana. kate has shown absolutely no hesitation to accompany them on hunting trips in balmoral and go fishing. diana could hardly to tolerate going to the polo matches of charles but kate has never
it was a year in between eaton and going to university in scotland where he worked in kenya and met the woman that many say was his first love. they became romantically involved. he staged a mock engagement. a tongue and cheek kind of thing. he asked her to marry him at the foot of mt. kenya. reporter: a place that will ironically play a key role in his engagement to cade middleton, but that later. first, william would have to meet kate, and that would happen at st. andrews university. why would he go there? i mean, all the other royals had gone there. i think an attempt to get away from the public eye to some extend. i met him as soon as we arrived. incredibly quickly, this group of friends formed. reporter: among his small intimate group of friends, a young woman whose background was anything but royal. i turned bright red when i
so she did have her sights set on him. eerily reminiscent of another young girl decades earlier. she was always known to adore prince charles, and her little bedroom cube cal hicle had pictl over him. while diana knew charles from the royal circles they traveled in, kate didn t know william at all, but nearly had a chance in the winter of 2000. after her graduation from marlborough both kate and chile traveled to chile with the same volunteer youth group but turns out at different times. malcolm sutherland was their expedition leader. it s incredible for a fact that william and kate didn t even know each other. they just missed each other. on two separate trips just weeks apart they helped build buildings, teach english and even clean toilets in the same small town in chile. kate is a tough, a sporty, fit lady. she knew what she was about.
and to arrive. that s when it s really stressful. excuse me. hey! hey! hey! reporter: all reminiscent of what happened to his mother. look at the images. for diana and kate, both taken before she was engaged. for diana, the pressure was often too much to bear. i remember once diana ran into a doorway and was crying. for kate, it was different. despite her young age she was very smart and guarded by the press. kate s friend, richard denning. a nightclub that everyone goes to in south kensington. she was famous for nipping into the bar and checking her hair and makeup before she left because she knew there were photographers waiting outside. reporter: while kate publicly held her own, privately there were serious concerns. she was not his fiancee and therefore she was not entitled to technically any bodyguards. william is surrounded by body guards at all times.
princess diana grew up in the shadows of a royal family. her grandmother a confidant of the queen. diana was an aristocrat through and through. kate is what the british called a commoner. she grew up away from estates and buckingham palace. it s in an area of outstanding natural beauty. reporter: john hailey is an innkeeper near kate s hometown, bucklebury berkshire. a small sleepy village 55 miles west of london. he met the middletons 14 years ago when they first came into his pub, the old boot inn. they are very nice, a very nice family, down to earth. very easy going, relaxed, a lovely family. they are not wealthy. solidly middle class. solidly middle class, hard working folks. carol goldsmith and michael met while working for a british airline. they married in 1980. kate was born in 1982. her early years were as ordinary as you can imagine. baptized at a picturesque