Prince Andrew and Fergie’s Unconventional Love Story

Are Prince Andrew and Fergie back together? Since the Duke and Duchess of York’s divorce in 1996, royal watchers have been asking if the exes will tie the knot for a second time. The Yorks have given the public many reasons to speculate. The controversial, scandal-prone couple still live together at the Royal Lodge, and even adopted Queen Elizabeth’s corgis, Muick and Sandy, after the monarch’s death in September 2022. For the world’s “happiest divorced couple,” it’s their own version of happily ever after. “We enjoy each other’s company; we allow each other to blossom,” Fergie once said. “I know it sounds like a fairytale but that’s the way we are.”

1985: Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson Start to Date 

Although they had played tag together as children, it is Princess Diana who ignites the romantic relationship between Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.

According to reports, Princess Diana believes her friend Fergie, the fun-loving, outgoing daughter of Prince Charles’s polo manager, will get along famously with Prince Andrew, the queen’s favorite son whose raunchy ways have earned him the nickname “Randy Andy.” And she’s right. On June 18, 1985, Prince Andrew and Fergie are seated next to each other for a luncheon at Windsor Castle, during the week of the Royal Ascot. They get on like a house on fire. “He fed her profiteroles and she punched him in the arm, saying they were much too fattening,” Kitty Kelley writes in The Royals. “He tried to stuff them into her mouth, and she laughingly threatened a food fight.”

Thus begins a whirlwind romance. “In Andrew I found my perfect man and soul mate. He was relaxed and endlessly charming, a prankster like me, yet solid and kind,” Fergie writes in Finding Sarah: A Duchess’s Journey to Find Herself. “In me, I suppose Andrew saw a wildflower — a bubbly and forthright woman without pretense or motives. Together we were like well-matched bookends, pleasant to look at and equally supportive of one another.”

1986: The Engagement 

On February 19, 1986, Prince Andrew proposes to Fergie at Floors Castle in Scotland. According to The Royals, the proposal goes off in the couple’s signature cheeky fashion: 

During a game of hide-and-seek, Andrew hid under a table, and Sarah, who was blindfolded, crawled around the floor looking for him. When she found him, she pinched his behind — hard. “Steady on!” he shouted. “You’re not allowed to squeeze the royal bottom yet!” That evening he proposed. Sarah replied, “When you wake up tomorrow morning, you can tell me it’s all a huge joke.” The next morning Andrew proposed again and gave her a $37,000 ruby ring.

The engagement of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson is announced publicly on March 19, 1986. “I know that the decision I made to marry Sarah was, and always will be, the best decision I have made, or ever will make in my life,” Prince Andrew says. 

1986: Prince Andrew and Fergie Wed

On July 23, 1986, Prince Andrew and Fergie’s wedding is held at Westminster Abbey in London. The ceremony is viewed by an estimated 500 million people worldwide. Despite the enormous public interest, the newly styled Duchess of York calls it “the happiest day of my life.”

“With nearly a million people lining the one-mile route, Dad looked desperately flustered. But I was just cruising. This was fun,” Fergie recalled. “On my wedding day all I knew or cared about was that Fergie was in glorious vogue.”