Kate Middleton’s Former Roommate Shares Unseen Photo of Her at a College Party: ‘Loveliest College Memories’

Kate Middleton 's college roommate is reminiscing on the "loveliest college memories" she shared with the future queen.

In an Instagram post from July, Laura Warshaur shared a previously unseen photo of her alongside Kate, now 42. The two lived in the dorms together at St. Salvator's Hall at the University of St. Andrews, where the Princess of Wales attended from 2001 to 2005 — and where she met and fell in love with her husband, Prince William .

The photo was taken when the two were at a house party at Kate and William's shared house on Hope Street, where they were roommates in their second year of college. In the photo, Kate wore a cream turtleneck jumper, a blue scrunchie on her wrist, minimal makeup and has her natural curls on display. She and Warshaur smile while holding brownie bites, The Sun reported.

"Sending love to Kate Middleton, the future Queen of England and my university roommate!" Laura wrote in the caption. "This was us at a Hope Street flat party. I have the loveliest college memories with Kate."

"She is the kindest, most caring, down-to-earth, genuine person, and it's incredible to see her shining so brightly and inspiring the world with her compassion and courage," Warshaur wrote.

The post came about four months after the Princess of Wales announced on March 22 that she had been diagnosed with cancer earlier in 2024. After a planned abdominal surgery in January, cancer was detected, and Princess Kate had been absent from public life until two summer appearances, the first at Trooping the Colour on June 15 and the second at Wimbledon a month later on July 14.

On Sept. 9, she announced that she had completed chemotherapy and has since begun a gradual return to public life, including an Oct. 10 appearance in Southport, England with Prince William and an expected appearance on Nov. 10 at Remembrance Sunday at The Cenotaph war memorial in London.

Warshaur, now a singer-songwriter, previously shared that she watched Kate fall in love with William at the University of St. Andrews, where the royal couple were friends and later roommates at 13A Hope Street before they fell in love. They shared the flat with two others, Fergus Boyd and Olivia Bleasdale, and the two story, four bedroom home had bulletproof windows and a bombproof front door for the future king's safety. William and Kate lived on separate floors of the home, but the Prince of Wales, 42, found an opportunity to impress his future wife in the home's small kitchen, where Kate later shared he'd make dishes like "Bolognese."

"I would have to wander in and save something that was going [wrong]," Kate later joked.

After graduating from college together in 2005, Prince William eventually proposed in 2010. The day before William and Kate's April 29, 2011 wedding day at Westminster Abbey, Warshaur opened up to PEOPLE about watching the two fall in love a decade prior.

"I remember the first time I met Kate, thinking, 'Wow,' " Warshaur said at the time. "She just had a lovely way about her." As for Prince William, "When he was around, it wasn't like there was all this pomp and circumstance," she said. "He could literally just walk around as a normal guy and people didn't make a big deal of it."

Warshaur remembered William popping by the dorm room she shared with Kate to raid her stash of cookies — "I remember him saying, 'Laura, do you have any biscuits?' " she said — and Kate sitting on her bed, learning chords on her blue guitar. William was also there when Kate was voted "prettiest girl" in St. Salvator's Hall at the end of the year.

"There were applause, and she was wearing this cool black off-the-shoulder shirt," Warshaur said. "She's very grounded, and that sense of ease comes through in the way she carries herself and the way she just graciously walked up and accepted this award."

"She's obviously stunning," she continued of Kate, "but she doesn't act in any way like, 'Oh, I'm this gorgeous person.' Kate was just genuine. And I don't feel like she'll ever change."

To mark the occasion of their wedding 13 years ago, Warshaur wrote them a song, called "To Will and Kate, Meet Me at Exit 109." Though she has since lost touch with them, she still has fond memories of their college days together: "There was just such an innocence about it," she said. "I look at my pictures, and I can see the romance and the magic."

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After the couple announced their engagement in November 2010, "I was like, 'Okay, these people haven't changed at all since I knew them in that freshman dorm!' " she said.