Woman Meets Her Prince Charming, Later Learns He's An Actual Prince

When Ariana Austin met "Joel" at a nightclub in Washington, D.C. 12 years ago, he seemed like a pretty average guy.

He had a dorky pickup line when he approached Austin and her friend ("You guys look like an ad for Bombay Sapphire") and he was trying a little to hard to be flirty, telling her "you're going to be my girlfriend" just minutes after they met. But Austin felt a connection with him, and the couple stayed in touch.

As their relationship developed, Joel gradually revealed the secret he had been hiding the night they met: Joel Makonnen, the mild-mannered lawyer, was better known as "Prince Yoel," the great-grandson of Ethiopia's last Emperor Haile Selassie I. Without realizing it, Austin had stumbled into a royal romance.

Makonnen's family trace their roots back to the biblical King Solomon, and ruled Ethiopia in a unbroken line stretching back hundreds of generations. But a Communist coup in 1974 forced the royal family into exile. Makonnen spent his childhood in Europe before his parents, the Prince and Princess, moved to America.

These dramatic events became the first link in a chain that led an American woman to become an Ethiopian princess, and the couple tied the knot at a beautiful royal wedding last month...

Read the full story on Shared.com

Photo: Shared.com


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