Meghan Markle’s College Classmate Posts Throwback Photo of Salsa Class as Duchess Hits Dance Floor in Colombia

Meghan Markle’s salsa dancing skills were years in the making.

Just before the Duchess of Sussex, 43, showed off her dance moves during her four-day trip to Colombia with Prince Harry, a throwback photo featuring Meghan said to be at a salsa lesson in college at Northwestern University surfaced online.

On Aug. 17, Iris Amador shared a photo on social media showing Meghan in a group photo with four other people. She wore a black turtleneck and jeans (an outfit combination she’d later repeat in the photo chosen for her 2021 holiday card with Prince Harry and their children, Prince Archie, now 5, and Princess Lilibet, now 3).

“The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visit Colombia, including #Cali, the world capital of salsa — music and dance that Meghan Markle likes, with whom we shared salsa classes at university,” Amador wrote below the photo on Instagram in Spanish, per a translation.

“Salsa lessons with the then future-to-be #DuchessOfSussex, in college,” she wrote in English.

Meghan graduated from Northwestern in 2003 with a double major in theater and international studies. The Daily Mail described Amador as a former classmate, and her LinkedIn lists her as a 2002 graduate of the university, located in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
Meghan and Prince Harry, 39, arrived in Colombia on Aug. 15 for a trip at the invitation of Vice President Francia Márquez, and the couple undertook engagements across the cities of Bogotá, Cartagena and Cali to highlight the core work of their Archewell Foundation. During the visit, they also highlighted other causes they’ve long supported, like the military community and female empowerment.

During one stop in Bogotá, the Duchess of Sussex grooved to the music during a performance at the National Centre for the Arts on Aug. 15, their first day in the South American country. A few days later, she hit the dance floor with Prince Harry in Cali on Aug. 18.

As seen in a video shared to X, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex salsa danced at Unidad Recreativa El Vallado alongside young people from the city of Cali on Aug. 18. Cali is known as the salsa capital of the world, and Prince Harry twirled Meghan on the dance floor before she leaned in for a kiss on the lips.

The couple have been known to express their love in public and have a history of hitting the dance floor. The couple shared personal photos of them dancing together at their May 2018 wedding reception in the docuseries Harry & Meghan, which premiered on Netflix in December 2022.

In fact, Vice President Márquez revealed at the kickoff of the trip that she was inspired to invite the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to Colombia after learning about them by watching Harry & Meghan. The six-part series chronicled the couple’s childhoods, courtship and step back from their royal roles in 2020 and became the biggest documentary debut week in Netflix history. It was released two years after the couple signed a multiyear deal with the streamer in 2020.

“How did I get to know Meghan and Harry? I first encountered them through the media, and I particularly watched the Netflix series about their lives and their story, which deeply moved me,” Márquez said at a press conference on Aug. 15.

“It motivated me to say, ‘This is a woman who deserves to visit our country and share her story,’ and undoubtedly, her visit will strengthen so many women around the world,” she added.

Márquez was with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex during many of their outings in Colombia, and she and Meghan appeared at the panel, “Afro-Descendant Women and Power: Voice of Equity,” in Cali on Aug. 18.

The event highlighted leading Afro-Colombian female women and entrepreneurs, and the Duchess of Sussex at one point removed her earpiece to address the crowd in Spanish. Meghan honed her Spanish-language skills during an internship with the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina after graduating from Northwestern.