Who Is Doria Ragland? All About Meghan Markle’s Mom

Though Meghan Markle’s mother, Doria Ragland, largely prefers to stay out of the spotlight, her influence on her daughter is enormous. 

Ragland makes occasional appearances on the Duchess of Sussex’s Instagram, including on September 2, when Meghan marked her mother’s 69th birthday. The As Ever founder and her mother are famously close, and on her birthday, Meghan shared a video to her Instagram Story with Ragland next to her, writing “Happy Birthday to my beautiful mom” atop a photo of the two women kissing. Meghan smiled from ear-to-ear and set the post to Stevie Wonder’s rendition of “Happy Birthday” from 1980, the year before Meghan was born. 

Meghan’s friend and makeup artist Daniel Martin told People previously that, when it comes to the Duchess of Sussex, “Meghan draws a lot of strength from her mother.” He added, “Doria is classy, chic, and confident, but not unapproachable. I definitely feel Meghan gets a lot of that from her mother.”

Ahead, find everything there is to know about the Ohio born, L.A.-native who Meghan Markle calls “mom.”

Meghan Markle and her mother, Doria Ragland, arrive at her wedding ceremony on May 19, 2018.

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She was born in Ohio and has worked as a social worker.

Originally born in Cleveland, Ohio, Ragland and her family moved to Los Angeles when she was a baby, where she remains today. Ragland holds an MSW in social work from the University of Southern California and has worked as—you guessed it—a social worker, but also a yoga instructor, travel agent, and a makeup artist.

She shares Meghan with her ex-husband, Thomas Markle.

Ragland was working as a makeup artist on the set of the soap opera General Hospital, when she met her now ex-husband Thomas Markle Sr.

They were married from 1979 to 1987 and share one child, Meghan—who Ragland calls “Flower”—born in 1981. Though they finalized their divorce in 1987, they separated when Meghan was just two years old.

She has a close relationship with Prince Harry.

Meghan said during a 2024 trip to Colombia alongside husband Prince Harry, “I find inspiration in the strong women around me. Of course, my mother being one of them. So much of how I approach things is less about the fight and more about how do we show up in a space and wash things over with love and kindness and generosity.”

For his part, Harry called his mother-in-law “amazing” in the 2022 Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, and in that same docuseries Ragland admitted that “the last five years have been challenging.”

Harry, Meghan, and Ragland often go out as a trio. “Meghan has always trusted her completely, but she has become a rock to Harry who, of course, lost his own mother so young,” a source told The Mail on Sunday (via Tatler). “Doria has a great warmth. She’s a brilliant cook and is very motherly, but she isn’t someone who seeks attention, and for Harry, her discretion and silence mean the world.”

Ragland has also drawn comparison to someone who Harry also deeply loved: his late grandmother Queen Elizabeth. “She is like the Queen,” an insider said of Ragland. “She never complains and never explains.”

Doria Ragland, Prince Harry, and Meghan Markle.

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Reflecting on when Meghan shared she was dating Harry for the first time, Ragland said that Meghan told her, “Mommy, I’m going out with Prince Harry,” and then Ragland remembered that she started “whispering ‘Oh my God.’”

“And so it was from the beginning, it was very sort of, ‘Oh my God, nobody can know,’” Ragland said.

When she first met Harry, Ragland said he was “handsome,” “really nice,” and had “really great manners”: “And they looked really happy together,” she said. “Once it was announced that they were together, it seemed kind of like a novelty.”

Meghan Markle and Queen Elizabeth on June 14, 2018.

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She was with Harry and Meghan during their 2023 car chase.

Ragland was by her daughter’s side when Meghan married Harry on May 19, 2018 at St. George’s Chapel. She has made sparse appearances since—including a notable one when Meghan was still a working royal before stepping back in 2020—but Ragland admitted in Harry & Meghan that it wasn’t always easy. Speaking publicly for the first time in the docuseries, Ragland shared, “I felt unsafe a lot. I can’t just go walk my dogs. I can’t just go to work. There was always someone there waiting for me.”

Ragland’s safety was also in jeopardy when she joined Harry and Meghan on May 16, 2023 at the Ms. Foundation’s Women of Vision Awards in New York City. A spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex shared the following day that Harry, Meghan, and Ragland were involved in a “near catastrophic car chase” while being pursued by “a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi” following the ceremony.

Doria Ragland, Meghan Markle, and Prince Harry.

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Before their scare that evening, Meghan mentioned her mother in her speech at the event, saying that Ragland “had a subscription [to Ms. magazine], and having these pages in our home, it signaled to me that there was just so much more than the dolled-up covers and the images that you would see on the grocery store covers….It signaled to me that substance mattered,” she said.

Of the subsequent car chase, “It was a disturbing situation, and they were shaken, but they are glad everyone’s okay,” a source said afterwards.

Meghan Markle and Doria Ragland.

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She’s Meghan’s biggest supporter.

When Meghan was still a working royal, Ragland flew to the U.K. to attend a celebration at Kensington Palace to mark the publication of Meghan’s Together: Our Community Cookbook in September 2018. After a guest at the event said Ragland must be “very proud” of Meghan’s work on the cookbook, Ragland sweetly responded she was “Head over heels.”

“It’s amazing,” she also said. “I’m just as excited as you are.” Ragland added, “I’m so glad I can put the face with the recipes. I’m going to tell everyone I met her [each of the cooks]! I’m going to make everything, I’m serious.”

“The power of women,” she continued. “We make things happen. We’re curious, we say yes, we show up. I’m inspired.”

Doria Ragland, Prince Charles, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Princess Charlotte, and Kate Middleton at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s wedding in 2018.

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She made an impression on the guests at Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding.

Ragland left a big impression on those who met her at Harry and Meghan’s wedding. “She has a softness, but I detected a steely core to her,” a royal family friend said of Ragland, per People. “She has come through a hell of a lot.” The insider added that Ragland “was lovely to talk to and bursting with pride.”

She inspired Meghan’s love of cooking—and is a great gift giver.

Meghan got her love of cooking at least in part from Ragland, including a penchant for spicy food. “I have a very, very high tolerance for spicy, and I love it,” Meghan said. “I crave it. Even at a young age, we didn’t have a lot, but we traveled. My mom was a travel agent. We would just try so many different flavors in so many different places.”

“My mom would make gumbo, and soul food has a lot of flavor and a lot of kick to it,” she added. “I crave that, and I always gravitate to that level of heat.”

Ragland still influences what’s in Meghan’s kitchen still today. On episode six of season one of With Love, Meghan, the As Ever founder shared that Ragland once bought her a food dehydrator for Christmas, which she shared as she was dehydrating citrus for margaritas she planned to serve later.

Meghan Markle in ‘With Love, Meghan’.

JAKE ROSENBERG/NETFLIX

She gets first dibs on samples from Meghan’s lifestyle brand.

Ragland has long been her only child’s biggest fan, and was the No. 1 person to receive a jar of Meghan’s famous As Ever strawberry jam back in 2024 (when the company was still called American Riviera Orchard). Celebrities posted on Instagram photos of jam jars labeled with a number, going up to No. 50; it wasn’t until Meghan shared on her Netflix series With Love, Meghan that it was Ragland who got the first jar of jam the company ever made.

Speaking to Mindy Kaling in the second episode of the show’s first season, Meghan addressed the fascination over who got what number, telling Kaling that “People took it very personally, the hierarchy.” After revealing that her mom was the No. 1 recipient, the Duchess of Sussex added, “Anyone who got them, I hope they felt like I wanted to share this with you.”

Meghan Markle and Mindy Kaling in ‘With Love, Meghan’.

Netflix

She is a proud grandmother to Archie and Lilibet.

In addition to enjoying running and yoga, Ragland stays “very physically active,” a neighbor previously told People, adding that she walks her dogs multiple times a day and takes them hiking. “She seems to live a quiet life,” the neighbor said. “She is friendly, but doesn’t really seem to be close friends with any neighbors.”

More than anything, Ragland is a proud mom and grandmother to Harry and Meghan’s kids Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. After announcing in 2018 that Meghan was expecting, Ragland said in a statement from Kensington Palace that she “is very happy about this lovely news and she looks forward to welcoming her first grandchild.” Lilibet would later join the family on June 4, 2021.

Doria Ragland on August 26, 2023.

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Ragland was there to support Meghan after the birth of both of her children, including Archie, who was born in the U.K. (Lilibet was born in California after the couple relocated there). “Any new mom wants her own mom around at this time, so it’s great,” a source told People, adding that “Harry really gets on well with her, too.”

“She’s super excited,” a source told the outlet of becoming a grandmother. “She and Meghan are so close.”

During an episode of Meghan’s 2022 “Archetypes” podcast, Meghan spoke about her childhood and “our little quirks together,” adding that the conversation on the show “got me thinking about all the ways my mom supported me, how she took care of me and the house and herself—and how she just juggled so much.”

In a resurrected Mother’s Day post from Meghan’s former lifestyle blog The Tig from all the way back to 2014, it’s clear how much of a guiding force Ragland has always been to her daughter: “She was keeping me safe,” Meghan wrote. “She was teaching me to take care of my body. She was introducing me to history, and fostering a love of being outdoors. She was planting the seed for me to become a foodie. She was showing me how to be a daughter, not just in that moment, but for when I became that grown woman. For right now. And 30 years from now. She was loving me. So tightly.”