Before committing to Meghan Markle in 2018, Prince Harry allegedly dated Catherine Ommanney, a former Real Housewives of D.C. alum. Apparently, the reality star spoke to Graeme Culliford of The Sun about her one-month-long romance with the Duke of Sussex, back when he was merely 21 years old, and she was a 34-year-old mother of two kids.
Culliford told Fox News that Ommanney initially hesitated to go public with the affair news but eventually agreed. The journalist said in 2022, “An old friend of mine let me know that Catherine was thinking about giving an interview. I got her number from that friend and gave her a call. She had quite a few concerns, but I was able to lay those. We did the interview in Mallorca, [Spain], and that was that.”
The alleged affair news came only months before Harry’s first-ever memoir , Spare , was released on January 10, 2023. Multiple reports in the UK believed that the now-exiled royal would reveal details of his past romances in his book. As a result, Ommanney “decided now the time is right to talk honestly about what happened between them.”
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The journalist added, “She was curious to know whether she might be featured in the book. It seems that she probably will not. But as he’s now opening up about his life, she thought it [was] fair enough that she should talk candidly about her own life and her experiences with him.” Meanwhile, Ommanney told Culliford, “I doubt I will be in Harry’s book as a prince can’t run off with a 34-year-old mother of two. It’s just not the done thing.”
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She was separated from her ex-husband Stephen at the time when she first met Harry at the Art Bar in London through mutual friends in May 2006. Her two daughters were 6 and 8 years old. The interior designer recalled, “Harry was wearing an Australian-style hat that made me laugh, so I asked him, ‘What are you doing looking like a t–t in that? I don’t think he was used to people taking the mickey, and once we started talking, it was like there was no one else was in the room.”
Afterward, Harry and Ommanney went to a “couple of nightclubs and then back to one of Harry’s friends’ house in Chelsea, where he made her a bacon sandwich,” and gave “me the most incredible, passionate kiss I have ever had in my life.” The TV personality added that because Harry was barely 21, a serious relationship was further from her mind. And, back then, he was already in an on-again-off-again relationship with Chelsey Davy from 2004 to 2011 before finally calling it quits.
He looks so sad’: Prince Harry’s former fling Catherine Ommanney blasts ‘manipulative and controlling’ Meghan Markle and says she ‘would have loved the Duke to marry somebody WHITE. @DailyMailUK fixed it for you. pic.twitter.com/ntU7IoUSTf
— Esheru (@EsheruKwaku) January 12, 2023
However, it wasn’t meant to last, as according to Culliford, Harry changed his number which “made it impossible for her to contact him again. They did bump into each other again in 2009 when they both happened to be at the same polo match in Barbados.” And their long conversation signaled that there were “no hard feelings” between them.
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While Harry moved on with Markle, after the reality show wrapped, Ommanney moved to the UK with her daughters Jade and Ruby, as per Us Weekly. It was also reported that she became a mother for the third time with her then-boyfriend Rick. Currently, she’s in Mallorca, Spain.