Being a member of a royal family is in many ways akin to being in a sorority: archaic rituals, an absurd amount of fancy dress-up occasions, traditional codes of behavior, philanthropy, living in a massive home with many roommates…but very few people have experienced both palace life and American Greek life. Most famously, Meghan Markle is one of them.
In 1999, Meghan enrolled in the prestigious Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and decided to rush. She joined Kappa Kappa Gamma, which was known for its “Midwestern blondes” who were “intelligent hot messes.”
“The thing we all have in common,” Kappa Kappa Gamma member Melania Hidalgo observed, per Andrew Morton’s Meghan and the Unmasking of the Monarchy, “is that we’re all very driven, ambitious, and passionate.”
And Meghan was just who they were looking for. “We just wanted to be sure that we secured her interest in our sorority,” sorority sister Coulter Bump told the Chicago Tribune. “She always had this manner to her of being very dignified and poised, just very appropriate in every circumstance. A person like that is what I wanted to ensure we had in our house, and luckily, she liked us back.”
Others in her 1999 pledge class agreed. “Meg was sort of always this ethereal, sophisticated, beautiful creature, who lived with us and was always willing to lend you a top,” fellow rushee Liz Kores Graham recalled.
One KKG member claimed pledges were not hazed, but that they were given a shirt inspired by Jem and the Holograms and taken out to the local Chuck E. Cheese when they joined.
Meghan decided to move into the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority house. According to Tom Bower’s Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors, her father, Thomas Markle, “automatically volunteered to pay the annual $45,000 fees.”
A theater and international relations major, sorority sisters recall Meghan often rehearsing lines, cooking, and watching movies in the house. One sorority sister told the Chicago Tribune that Meghan was diplomatic when there were squabbles at the house. She was known as a fountain of fashion and makeup advice, and according to Bower, she loved the dating guide The Rules, the controversial self-help book by Sherrie Schneider published in 1995, reciting passages by heart. “She’s the total package,” one sister recalled.
According to Morton, Meghan worked hard in school but she also loved partying on weekends. Her first college boyfriend, Morton writes, was basketball player Steve Lepore, who raised her profile with her sorority sisters. They were reportedly “impressed that she had snared such a hottie.”
Always an extrovert, Meghan was tapped to be recruitment chair for Rush. “Meghan’s Greek life was less Animal House and more Elle Woods,” Omid Scobie writes in Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family. “As rush and recruitment chairman, she was in charge of bringing new people into the sorority and making them feel welcome.”