Ariana met a prince in a nightclub. Now they're married

Mary Donaldson isn’t the only woman who’s met a prince in a bar.

Ariana Austin, 33, was in a Washington DC nightclub in 2005 when a handsome stranger approached her and dropped a pick-up line.

“I said, ‘You guys look like an ad for Bombay Sapphire’, or whatever the gin was,” Joel Makonnen recalls in a New York Times Weddings feature.

“Not even five minutes later I said, ‘You’re going to be my girlfriend.’ ”

His audacity paid off - the pair began dating, and married in a lavish ceremony on September 9.

However, there was one teeny little detail Makonnen failed to mention on the dance floor that night.

He’s also known as Prince Yoel, the great-grandson of Ethiopia’s last emperor who ruled the African country until civil war erupted in the 1970s.

You know… no big deal.

The 35-year-old lawyer didn’t tell Austin about his royal heritage - which is believed to stretch back as far as the biblical King Solomon - until they were dating.

His girlfriend was, as you might imagine, stunned.

“It’s unbeatable heritage and history … It combines sheer black power and ancient Christian tradition," she tells the New York Times.

Makonnen proposed to Austin in 2014 after almost a decade of pursuing their dreams and professional ambitions around the world, often separately.

“I think we both had this feeling that this was our destiny,” Austin says. 

“But I felt like I had things that I had to do.”

On their wedding website, they describe the foundation of their relationship as “Old world aristocracy met New world charm”.