Mary & Frederik - A modern fairytale

THE ROYAL COUPLE CELEBRATE THEIR 17TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY AFTER MEETING IN A SYDNEY PUB

- Kylie Walters

It started as a typical Aussie love story – a girl meets a boy in a bar, they fall in love and live happily ever after. But when 28-year-old Mary Donaldson met Fred during a night out at the Slip Inn in Sydney’s Darling Harbour in September 2000, he turned out to be the heir to Europe’s oldest monarchy.

“The first time we met, we shook hands,” Mary, now 49, would later recall to biographer Jens Andersen of the night she met Crown Prince Fredrik. “I didn’t know he was the prince of Denmark. Half an hour later, someone came up to me and said, ‘Do you know who these people are?’” she explained.

At the end of the night, the Crown Prince had made enough of an impression for the Tasmanian-born law graduate to hand over her number. “There was enough of a click that I gave Frederik my telephone number and he rang me the next day,” she explained on Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope. “It wasn’t the fireworks in the sky or anything like that, but there was a sense of excitement.”

While Frederik had earned himself the reputation of being a playboy prince by dating models and actresses, it was Mary’s natural look that attracted him. “[She] has that girl-next-door beauty,” Starmakers transformation coach Teresa Page, who taught Mary etiquette and deportment, tells WHO. “She is very down to earth, authentic and engaging. She didn’t put on any airs and graces.”