Royal watchers had a new in-law-in-waiting to gossip about Tuesday, with the news that Pippa Middleton is engaged to marry her financier boyfriend, James Matthews, next year.
Sister Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, and brother-in-law Prince William are delighted, according to a palace statement.
But who is Matthews? He's 40, handsome and rich, a former race car driver-turned-hedge fund manager at Eden Rock Capital Management in London, where he made his millions. British celebrity reporters are no doubt digging further into his background now, but there's a fair bit known about him, according to the profiles already landing.
The Evening Standard speculated that Pippa's nephew, Prince George, who turns 3 on Friday, might serve as a page boy at the wedding. Other media outlets rushed to acquire pictures of Pippa, 32, leaving her London home Tuesday, her octagonal diamond engagement ring flashing on her left hand.
If Matthews sounds familiar, that's because he's Pippa's longtime pal and an ex-boyfriend; the pair dated briefly back in 2012, and he only returned full time to Pippa's life in 2015.
"He's one hell of a catch!" read one headline in the Daily Mail story by longtime royal correspondent Richard Kay, who was first to report the engagement late Monday.
Pippa and Matthews have charity work in common: Since her writing career stalled, Pippa has raised money for her fiancé's family charity, the Michael Matthews Foundation, which was set up to fund children's education (in Nepal, Thailand and Africa) in memory of his brother: In 1999, Michael became the youngest Brit to summit Mount Everest, then died on the descent. His body was never found.
Her connection to the charity has spurred Pippa to undertake several sporting challenges, including a 2014 bike ride across the USA and a 47-mile aquathon in Sweden.
Besides their love of sports, they have other things in common: Like the Middletons, Matthews descends from a working-class family, with parents who reached the wealthy middle class by working hard and being smart about money (his father started out as a mechanic). Like the Middletons, the Matthews family is "a shining example of the social fluidity of modern Britain," Kay proclaimed.
Also like Pippa, who has a colorful and controversial maternal uncle, Gary Goldsmith, Matthews has a colorful and controversial younger brother, Spencer Matthews, a reality TV star in the U.K. who claimed in his memoir, Confessions of A Chelsea Boy, to have slept with 1,000 women. Spencer was photographed snorting cocaine in 2012 and was recently banned from ITV’s I’m A Celebrity after acknowledging he was taking steroids.
But James is nothing like Spencer; he's described as serious and low-key, which is sure to please the young royals, not to mention the Middleton parents, Carole and Michael, who also expressed delight at the news of the engagement. (Brother James Middleton, who is close to both sisters, has not yet been heard from.)
Pippa has had an active romantic life since 2011, when she and her curves caught eyes as the bridesmaid at the royal wedding of Will and Kate.
"The engagement brings the curtain down on ... Pippa’s search for love, which has been mesmerizing us ever since that debut in her slinky Alexander McQueen frock outside Westminster Abbey nearly crashed Twitter," Kay reported.
Her boyfriend at the time of the wedding, star cricket player-turned-financier Alex Loudon, disliked Pippa's new celebrity, with a constant pack of paparazzi trailing her, so they split and Pippa began hanging out with Matthews.
By 2013, she had fallen for another London financier, Nico Jackson; in September of that year, Sunday People, the weekend celebrity tabloid of the Daily Mirror, reported Pippa was secretly engaged to Jackson. False alarm.
By October 2015, the relationship with Jackson was over, after he moved to Switzerland for work. Soon the paparazzi were snapping her hanging out with Matthews again, turning up at his Chelsea mansion, strolling London streets, hitting Soho nightclubs and European ski slopes, taking in tennis at Wimbledon.
By New Year's 2016, they were a couple, seen frolicking at the beach with her brother during a vacation on St. Barts at his parents' exclusive hotel there, the Eden Rock.
Brother Spencer has said in the past that James isn't a fan of the media, a sentiment that media-wary Prince William shares (James and the future king also attended the same exclusive school, Eton).
But also thanks to Spencer, James is already familiar with the spillover of media attention that comes with a celebrity relative. Now he's going to have to adjust to living with the attention that comes with proximity to the royals.
