Who Is Doria Ragland?

She loves yoga, dancing to soul music and has strong humanitarian values. William Langley says Prince Harry’s mother-in-law will be a breath of fresh air in the sometimes-stuffy House of Windsor.

- William Langley

She’s a 61-year-old yoga teacher and New Age-style therapist who lives in an ochre-painted bungalow around the corner from rock star Tina Turner’s former Los Angeles home. In the history of the House of Windsor, there hasn’t been a mother-in-law like Doria Ragland.

Doria raised her only child alone after her marriage broke down. Meghan was six when her parents divorced, and she and her mother have an extraordinarily close relationship. One which has known difficult times, family fractures, romantic heartbreak, and may now be tested in ways that neither of them can quite calculate. “Sure, everyone’s happy about things,” says Meghan’s uncle, Joe Johnson, a 68-year-old retired sign-painter, “but let’s not pretend there won’t be problems for Doria.”

The chilled, faintly bohemian world that Doria inhabits could scarcely be further removed from the one her 36-year-old actress daughter now enters as wife of the sixth-in-line to the British throne. Doria’s modest home sits on a winding, palm-lined stretch of LA’s busy Angeles Vista Boulevard, in a socially-mixed district of the sprawling Californian metropolis.

A random sampling of Doria’s neighbours suggests that few have even heard of Prince Harry, or can muster very much interest in the glittering nuptials.

“It’s always nice when two people fall in love,” says Bernice Neely, who lives a few doors along from Doria, “but I didn’t know a thing about any of this until all the news crews came along. I think they’re good people. Will this be on TV?”

“Harry’s the one with red hair, right?” chuckled neighbour Sherrie Quinn. “It’s great, but I don’t think it’s going to affect people’s lives much around here.”