The Royals who shop in Co-op: As Edward and Sophie celebrate 25 years together, REBECCA ENGLISH reveals the key to their barrier-breaking success By Rebecca English Published: 17:06, 18 June 2024 | Updated: 17:43, 18 June 2024 e-mail 20 View comments When Sophie and Edward tied the knot on June 19, 1999, they had already broken several significant royal barriers. Having dated Edward for six years, the then Sophie Rhys-Jones was the first royal girlfriend ever to be permitted to stay overnight at Buckingham Palace as an unmarried woman — still a shocking proposition at the time. What’s more, as the daughter of a tyre salesman from Kent she was, to use criminally old-fashioned parlance, a ‘commoner’ (let us not forget, when he was born, Edward was, by comparison, third in line to the throne).
And the couple’s insistence on not giving up their day jobs — she in PR and he in television production — was equally unheard of in royal circles. But perhaps most notable was the fact that they were optimistically embarking on married life at a time when Edward’s three siblings — Prince Charles , Prince Andrew and Princess Anne — had all just seen their first marriages sadly end in divorce. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh on the balcony at Buckingham Palace during Trooping the Colour at the weekend And yet against the odds, Sophie and Edward — who were made the Earl and Countess of Wessex when they wed but have since been ‘promoted’ to Duke and Duchess of Edinb.