She finally said yes. After more than 24 years together -- 4 children, one adopted son -- India Hicks and David Flint Wood have announced their engagement. India is the youngest child of the late interior designer David Hicks and his wife, Lady Pamela Mountbatten, the younger daughter of the late Earl Mountbatten of Burma.
India is a goddaughter of the Prince of Wales and was one of the bridesmaids at his 1981 wedding to Lady Diana Spencer.
It was the Mail on Sunday on November 17, 1996, where the world first learned that India, 29, was the new love in the life of 36-year-old David Flint Wood, who was running the Ocean View Club on Eleuthera in the Bahamas, where India's family owned a vacation home. David dated Lady Helen Windsor for four years before she met art gallery owner, Tim Taylor. They married in 1992.
At the time, India was based in New York City where she modeled for Ralph Lauren and Yves Saint Laurent.
A day after the Mail on Sunday broke the news of India's relationship, the Daily Mail had another scoop. India was expecting David's baby, and there were no plans for marriage.
"It's wonderful news and we're all delighted," India's older sister, Edwina told the Mail.
India and David spoke of their romance in Hello, only a week later. "It's very complicated. I'm madly in love with a man I first had a crush on when I was a teenager, and now it feels like I've won the lottery. I'm going to have a baby and I'm living in paradise. I have never been so happy."
They first met when India was 11. "He used to drive down to my boarding school and come and take me out with Edwina for hamburgers. He was like a wonderful, older brother, someone I could play up and terribly naughty with."
David thought India "was a spoiled little brat in those days."
They reconnected in the spring of 1996 after India's nine-year relationship with Aris Comninos had ended traumatically the previous fall.
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In the Hello feature (November 23, 1996), India said: "I think marriage, whether it comes or not, can happen later. And if I do get married I want to do it in the proper way, with my family and all our friends. I don't want to skip off down the road and do it quickly just because I am having a baby."
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The couple has four children: Felix Austen May 23, 1997) Amory John (June 25,1999), Conrad Lorenzo (April 25, 2003) & Domino Carmen (December 17, 2007, Miami, Florida). All four children were born in Miami, Florida.
Lady Pamela and the Prince of Wales were "unfazed" by India's decision to have children without a wedding ring. But her late father disapproved. "We were never close," India told Tatler in May 2002. "There was something about me that irritated him. It became a matter of wills towards the end."
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The three boys were baptized in the parish church at Eweleme, near Lady Pamela's Oxfordshire home, where India was also baptized. Domino's baptism took place at St.Bartholomew's Church in Brightwell Baldwin, where India's father was buried in 1998.
In 2011, India became the joint guardian of a local boy, Wesley, then 15 years old, after the young man's mother died from breast cancer, sharing custody with Wesley's aunt.
India was certain that marriage was not for her. "One would have thought that being stranded on a rock for 16 years would have had the effect of driving us apart, but it seems to have had the reverse effect and bonded us together.
"We have a relationship built on respect and humour -- lots of humour -- and I think living life slightly less ordinary had made us stronger.
"It is also perhaps because I have a man who is an upstanding, moral, and good human being who I am still in love with," India told Hello in November 2011.
She reiterated this feeling in another Hello interview in April 2015. "The marriage thing was never important for me. What was important was that the children knew they were the centre of our world, which they are."
India remains close to her godfather who wrote the introduction to her third book, India Hicks: Island Style.
India and David and their family live in Hibiscus Hill, a 2-story house on Harbour Island in the Bahamas.
"I carry with me an impressive historical background. I've built a unique life here, where my children are free from smog, traffic, shoes. But more than anything, I realise that to be loved and understood and to love and understand in return is to be truly blessed," she said in 2015.
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The family now divide their time between Harbour Island and their country. India owned some farmland in Oxfordshire "near but not too near to her mother", where they built a house with a small garden overlooking large fields. The country retreat has been named America Farm.
India is a descendant of Queen Victoria. Victoria - Alice - Victoria - Louis - Pamela - India. Lady Pamela and the Duke of Edinburgh are first cousins.
https://www.hibiscushillharbourisland.com/
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