{"id":2488365,"date":"2026-07-04T20:04:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T20:04:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2488365"},"modified":"2026-07-04T20:04:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T20:04:40","slug":"prince-william-and-harrys-friend-engaged-to-tennis-legend-maria-sharapova-celebrity-news-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/prince-william-and-harrys-friend-engaged-to-tennis-legend-maria-sharapova-celebrity-news-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"Prince William and Harry’s friend engaged to tennis legend Maria Sharapova – Celebrity News – Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Prince William is anticipated to make an appearance in the Royal Box at Wimbledon at some point this summer \u2014 and he also shares a lesser-known connection to a tennis legend.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Royal Family has a longstanding association with Wimbledon<\/a>, with the late Queen Elizabeth II becoming patron of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (AELTC), where the tournament is held, in 1952 \u2014 a role now assumed by the Princess of Wales.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Prince William and Prince Harry<\/a> are also close friends with Alexander Gilkes, who has been engaged to Maria Sharapova, one of the most accomplished tennis players in history, since 2020.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Alexander first met William when both were students at Eton College, and the two maintained a close bond over the years as he established himself as a prominent art dealer, co-founding the online auction house Paddle8 in 2011.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Prior to his relationship with Maria, Alexander was married to fashion designer Misha Nonoo, a mutual friend of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle<\/a>, who was rumored to have introduced the couple.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The businessman and Grand Slam champion began their relationship in 2018 and welcomed their son, Theodore, in July 2022, at which point they put plans for a “big wedding” on hold.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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While Alexander has not spoken publicly about his friendship with William and Harry, he was among the guests at William and Kate’s wedding in 2011.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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He is also a close friend of Princess Eugenie, whom he reportedly calls “Eug”, worked at Paddle8 for two years after graduating from university.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The couple announced that Alexander had proposed in December 2020, with Maria posting a selfie on Instagram with the caption: “I said yes from the first day we met. This was our little secret, wasn’t it.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Alexander shared in his own post: “Thank you for making me a very, very happy boy. I look forward to a lifetime of loving you and learning from you.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The tennis pro indicated they were “not in a rush” to marry in a 2024 interview and would probably do so “in the next couple of years”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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“We were going to have a big wedding, and then I got pregnant, and so we haven’t scheduled a new wedding yet,” she told People Magazine.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.the-express.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prince William is anticipated to make an appearance in the Royal Box at Wimbledon at some point this summer \u2014 and he also shares a lesser-known connection to a tennis legend. The Royal Family has a longstanding association with Wimbledon, with the late Queen Elizabeth II becoming patron of the All England Lawn Tennis and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2488366,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25177],"tags":[489925,354623,22730,23068,362913],"class_list":["post-2488365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrities","tag-alexander-gilkes","tag-maria-sharapova","tag-prince-harry","tag-prince-william","tag-wimbledon"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Prince-William-and-Harrys-friend-engaged-to-tennis-legend-Maria.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2488365"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2488367,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2488365\/revisions\/2488367"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2488366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2488365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2488365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2488365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}