In the most unlikely way possible, a Washington D.C. native met and married her Ethiopian prince charming this past September in a wedding for the ages.
It all began 12 years ago. Ariana Austin and Joel "Prince Yoel" Makonnen first met on a D.C. nightclub dance floor while the two were still at University.
“I said, ‘You guys look like an ad for Bombay Sapphire,’ or whatever the gin was,” Makonnen recalled of the pickup line in a New York Times profile, one now infamous with Austin’s family.
“Not even five minutes later I said, ‘You’re going to be my girlfriend.’”
He did not mention that he was royalty. It turns out that Makonnen is the grandson of the last Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie. After a Marxist regime called the Derg deposed Haile Selassie in 1974, Prince David Makonnen and Princess Adey Imru Makonnen fled to Rome in exile. Joel was born in Rome and raised in Switzerland.
Not only is Joel from a prestigious family, but his bride comes from a great family as well. Austin's maternal grandfather was a lord mayor of Georgetown, the capital of Guyana in South America.
This story of black excellence only gets better. These two are extremely well educated and cultured travelers.
In 2003, he completed his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration at Kogod School of Business, with a major in International Business at The American University in Washington, D.C.
Joel also obtained his Juris Doctor in 2015 from Howard University School of Law. Ariana attended Fisk University and studied arts, education and creative writing at Harvard.
After a decade of globetrotting and long-distance romance, the two cemented their love in Septemeber at the Debre Genet Medhane Alem Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in Temple Hills, Md. The lavish affair was a timeless mixture of an Ethiopian Orthodox ceremony and western Christian traditions.
The two have committed to making the world a better place as well. Austin is a philanthropist and Joel works in the international legal affairs department of Otsuka, a Japanese company.
A romance like this should be greenlit and turned into the next Coming to America.
