Katie Couric Remembering Princess Diana’s Funeral Will Break Your Coronary heart

Because the 22nd anniversary of Princess Diana‘s premature demise approaches, many can nonetheless bear in mind the place they have been on that universally heartbreaking day. 

Whereas the world awaited information of the late Princess of Wales’ destiny after struggling a automotive crash, journalist Katie Couric was “glued to the TV.” As she recalled in an essay penned for InStyle, her late husband Jay Monahan was within the midst of his battle with colon most cancers when Diana tragically died on August 31, 1997. Lower than every week later, Couric was in London, a metropolis in mourning as she described, to cowl the funeral for NBC. 

“Though I used to be reporting on what was occurring, I too was mourning Princess Diana. And on the similar time, I saved imagining what would occur if my husband died from the most cancers that had taken over our lives,” Couric wrote within the essay. “The younger princes [Prince William and Prince Harry] made me consider our personal younger daughters and what dropping a father or mother may imply for them. At one level, the producers needed to take the cameras off me, as a result of I used to be so choked up and tears began to stream down my face.”

Not solely did the heartbreaking funeral set off these ideas for Couric, however she was additionally mourning somebody she had reported on throughout her profession and finally met a yr earlier at a Chicago luncheon held in Diana’s honor. 

“We chatted and she or he informed me she favored my pink lipstick,” Couric described. “Then I stated one thing like, ‘You should be exhausted touring and assembly so many individuals and having to shake fingers with all these strangers. Are you excited to go house?’ I’ll always remember her response: ‘I’d be, however I am going house to an empty home.'” That yr, she and Prince Charles divorced. 

Tim Graham Photograph Library through Getty Photographs

15 years later, Couric crossed paths with Diana’s sons when she interviewed William and Harry following the previous’s high-profile marriage ceremony to Kate Middleton. 

“At that time, my husband had been gone for 14 years. I at all times questioned in regards to the void he left in our women’ lives, particularly when it got here to massive events. So I requested Prince William as gingerly as doable about not having his mother at his marriage ceremony to Kate Middleton,” she recalled within the essay. He answered that it was troublesome, however that he had ready himself beforehand. “It is the one time since she’s died the place I’ve thought to myself, ‘It might be unbelievable if she was right here,'” William informed Couric within the interview. 

“I felt actually unhappy for him and unhappy about how a lot Diana had missed,” the journalist wrote. “However I additionally felt proud as a mom that he understood how painful it was not having her there, but knew he needed to soldier on.”