Thomas Markle Says He Paid ‘Every Penny’ Of Daughter Meghan’s College Tuition Despite Her Claims
Thomas Markle says he paid for his duchess daughter’s education — and he has receipts. The estranged 75-year-old father of Meghan Markle told The Mail On Sunday that he disputes previous claims made by Meghan that she funded her own university tuition.
Markle told the U.K. publication that he paid “every penny” of Meghan’s $200,000 tuition at Northwestern University.
“I paid every penny of her tuition and I have the bank statements to prove it.”
In her first major speech as a royal last year, Duchess Meghan told students at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji that she used scholarships and financial aid to help fund her way through college. According to Yahoo Entertainment UK, the newlywed duchess claimed to have firsthand experience with the “challenges” of paying for higher education.
“I am fully aware of the challenges of being able to afford this level of schooling for many people around the world, myself included,” Meghan said in her speech last year. “It was with scholarships, financial aid programs, and work study from my earnings from a job on campus that went directly towards my tuition that I was able to attend university, and without question, it was worth every effort.”
Once upon a time, before the royal wedding, before Prince Harry, before Suits, Meghan Markle was a freelance calligrapher. https://t.co/wBrBijLqiV
— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) December 19, 2018
Meghan previously told Vanity Fair that her parents Thomas Markle and Doria Ragland were both “so supportive” as she pursued an acting career. The future Suits star turned royal family member said she took a lot of “odds-and-ends jobs” to pay her bills as she worked as a calligrapher and as a hostess at a restaurant while trying to find work as an actor after graduating from college in 2003.
But before that, the future Duchess of Sussex grew up in Los Angeles where she attended high-end private schools. Meghan’s father worked as a highly respected television lighting and photography director on TV shows like Married With Children and General Hospital. Markle Sr. even won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Design Excellence For a Daytime Drama Series, per Town and Country.
While Markle presumably made a good living in the TV world, in 2017, Meghan’s brother Thomas Jr. told The Daily Mail that it was his father’s $750,000 lottery win, an event that reportedly occurred when Meghan was 9, that set up the family financially and allowed his sister to go to the best schools in the country.
“That money allowed Meg to go to the best schools and get the best training,” Thomas Jr. told The Mail. “Meg is someone who has always had laser focus. She knows what she wants and she doesn’t stop until she gets it.”
In addition to his claims about Duchess Meghan’s tuition payments, Markle expressed regret about not yet meeting his son-in-law, Prince Harry, or his grandchild, baby Archie, when speaking with The Mail on Sunday. In the interview, Markle questioned why the wealthy prince didn’t hop on a jet and personally ask him for Meghan’s hand in marriage before he proposed to her in 2017, as previously shared by The Inquisitr. He also said he’s “disappointed” not to meet baby Archie.
