How Grace Kelly Got Engaged Days After Meeting Prince Rainier, Leaving 2-Year Relationship: Her Road to Becoming Princess
- - How Grace Kelly Got Engaged Days After Meeting Prince Rainier, Leaving 2-Year Relationship: Her Road to Becoming Princess
Virginia ChamleeDecember 12, 2025 at 8:00 AM
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Grace Kelly's romance with Prince Rainier of Monaco was truly a whirlwind
A PEOPLE cover story from 1983 explored how Grace had been in a a two-year relationship with Russian fashion designer Oleg Cassini when she first met Rainier
Following a publicity shoot for a magazine, Grace was soon engaged — and then became royalty
After she found fame as an actress, Grace Kelly found a new life as a princess — marrying Prince Rainier of Monaco in April 1956, after which time she became Her Serene Highness Princess Grace of Monaco, subsequently leaving her acting career.
A look back at Kelly's romance with the prince reveals what a whirlwind a relationship it truly was.
A PEOPLE cover story from 1983 reveals that Grace had been in a a two-year relationship with Russian fashion designer Oleg Cassini when she first met Rainier — ultimately getting engaged to the royal in a matter of days.
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Speaking to PEOPLE after her death, Cassini recounted how he had first visited Grace in Monaco while she filmed To Catch a Thief, when she sent him a postcard that read, "Those who love me follow me."
"Well, I let my dress collections go to hell, and I flew to Cannes," Cassini told PEOPLE. "She was warm and funny and caring, also very disciplined about her work. She never stayed out past 11 p.m. Up till now our relationship had been platonic, but we had such a wonderful time that she asked me what my intentions were. I told her I wanted to marry her. We became secretly engaged."
But the engagement wouldn't last, with Cassini going on to explain how Grace was eventually introduced to Prince Rainier, "as a photo publicity stunt for a magazine article."
"I thought nothing of it. She said Rainier was nice, but that was it," Cassini told PEOPLE.
The two traveled back to America, with Grace ultimately convinced by her parents not to marry Cassini."Her parents had talked her out of it. I didn't see her again until she called to tell me she was engaged to Prince Rainier," he said.
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Grace Kelly on the set of Rear Window
As PEOPLE reported, "Rainier had been seeking an escort after his four-year affair with French actress Gisele Pascal ended in part over her fling with Gary Cooper (apparently a busy man) and her desire to continue acting."
Per the cover story, Pascal "reportedly couldn't bear children, and the 20,500 Monégasques kept reminding their Prince that he must produce a male heir if they were to assure continued Grimaldi rule. (Otherwise, Monaco, by treaty, would become a French protectorate.)"
Then, according to biographer Arthur Lewis, "Along came Grace, beautiful, fiscally sound and, best of all, fecund."
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Grace Kelly showing her engagement ring to her mother while her father and fiance Prince Rainier III, of Monaco looks on.
Insiders detailed how, following their two-hour meeting, Rainier was arranged to meet Grace once more at a family gathering on Christmas Day 1955. Three days later, they were engaged to be married.
The Kelly family, by all accounts, was stunned — with family friend Jack Edelstein surmising that Grace's father, John B. Sr., "was looking for a prince of a man. He hadn't counted on a man who was a Prince."
Princess Grace and Prince Rainier would go on to welcome three children together: Princess Caroline in 1957, Prince Albert in 1958 and Princess Stéphanie in 1965.
Seventeen years after welcoming their youngest, on Sept. 14, 1982, Princess Grace died of a brain hemorrhage in a Monaco hospital after suffering a milder hemorrhage behind the wheel of her car, veering off the road and plummeting more than 100 feet down a ravine. Princess Stéphanie was in the passenger seat at the time of the accident.
Prior to her royal life, Grace, a Philadelphia native, had been a prolific actress. She was most well known for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Rear Window and Dial M for Murder, but appeared in 11 movies in her acting career — including The Country Girl, for which she won an Academy Award and To Catch A Thief — and dozens of live theatre productions.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
