When Taryn Stephenson was 13 years old, she had her whole life more or less plotted out: Prince William was going to meet her during his 1998 visit to Vancouver, fall for her immediately and take her back to England for their wedding.
“I was head over heels in love with Prince William and was fairly certain that I was going to be his princess,” Stephenson, now 31, remembers with a laugh.
To make that dream a reality, Stephenson woke up at 4:30 a.m. and skipped school to snag a prime location to watch the then-16-year-old prince arrive at the planetarium.
And while she never spoke with William or shook his hand, she said they did share a moment.
“He got out of the car and he seemed a bit nervous; he kept adjusting his tie. Then he walked by and he stopped and he smiled and he waved at me,” Stephenson said. “I thought, you know what? That’s it. He’s going to go into the planetarium and he’s going to start thinking, how am I going to get ahold of that girl?”
To make sure William could get in touch, Stephenson wrote a letter to Buckingham Palace. She received a cordial response a few weeks later, but it wasn’t from William. Their romance wasn’t meant to be.
Looking back nearly two decades later, Stephenson said that while she’s still an admirer of the Royal Family, the realities of a life in the public eye seem much less appealing.
“Putting your family on display and yourself on display for thousands of people to show up, take photos, want to shake your hand” would be exhausting, she said.
“And then afterwards the whole debrief: what was she wearing, how was her hair, what hat did she have on, did the kids wave, did they high-five or not high-five the prime minister – you know, it’s every single detail.”
Stephenson, a promotions coordinator for Virgin Radio, which shares a parent company with CTV News, believes her teenage crush had as much to do with the royal lifestyle as it did with William himself.
“The idea of being royalty, of living that beautiful, charmed life,” she said.
“I’m not going to lie, I was seriously attracted to him. I thought he was really handsome and super charming, but honestly I think it was that idea [that appealed to me].”
She also had a keen interest in all things British; Stephenson admits that around the same time, she also entertained a secret fantasy of joining the Spice Girls.
But asked whether she would accept a hypothetical royal proposal today, Stephenson said she might have to decline.
“I could not have my life under a microscope like that. There’s a lot of pressure there. And I mean look at me,” she said, gesturing to her shortly cropped hair. “Hey, Prince William, you want to marry a girl who looks like Justin Bieber?”
With a report from CTV Vancouver’s St. John Alexander
