Meghan Markle's first boyfriend Joshua Silverstein recalls their first kiss and breakup
Meghan Markle's first kiss was with a boy named Joshua Silverstein whom she claimed she had not kept tabs on after their childhood fling ended. Silverstein was tracked down to Los Angeles, where he works as a successful stand-up comedian, and he described the whole story of how they met and why things went sour between them in an interview with Daily Mail.
In 2013, in an interview with veteran talk show host Larry King, Markle revealed that her first kiss had been at the age of 13 in a sort of summer camp with a boy named Joshua Silverstein. King asked her if she knew what he was up to now, and she replied, "No, I don't know what happened to Joshua."
Silverstein, now 37, was discovered to be a stand-up comedian, actor, teacher, and writer in Los Angeles, where he lives with his two children, a five-year-old and a ten-year-old, and is engaged to be married to a photographer named Cinthya. He recalled the details of his and Markle's short-lived romance.
The two of them met at the Agape International Spiritual Center, a trans-denominational congregation that used to be based in Santa Monica, which Markle frequented with her mother Doria Ragland to join thousands of people in the worship there.
Both Markle and Silverstein were aspiring performers when they first met, which formed the basis of their friendship at the time. When the center organized a theatrical summer camp for youth in the congregation, a romance between the two developed.
Markle had never made out with anyone before, but it wasn't Silverstein's first time, so he didn't remember exactly where they first exchanged their first kiss. He laughed, "I don't remember! I couldn't even tell you, man! [But] I'm glad she remembers it."
Silverstein said that they were together the whole camp. "We were a couple of kids. We dated for the duration of the camp, probably a couple of months,' he said. "We were just kind of enjoying the spark of it. We were into theatre. We liked acting … you know, we were together every day [of the summer holiday] because of the camp."
The one time that they went on a date outside the spiritual center turned out to be their last date together. 'Clueless' had been in theaters that year, having been released sometime in July 1995. However, Silverstein couldn't stand the movie, especially a scene in which Alicia Silverstone's character Cher kissed Paul Rudd's character Josh, and he walked out on Markle.
Silverstein recalled, "We split up because I left her during the movie. We were watching together with our friends, and I left during the romantic scene because I didn't like the movie, and I was a teenage boy who didn't care. I was 13 or 14 and I didn't want to watch the romance part, so I got up with some of my friends to hang out, and we left. And then, I think the next day, we broke up."
Like Markle, Silverstein is biracial, with a Jewish father and an African-American mother, and he could not relate to the characters in the film (even though Stacey Dash was in it). He said, "Meghan didn't appreciate that I left my girlfriend during the kissing scene! I think I just couldn't relate to a bunch of privileged white people in a movie. So I said, 'I'm going outside.' She wanted to stay, so she watched the rest of it with other friends of ours."
After the breakup, the two of them decided to stay friends and they often bumped into each other at the spiritual center. However, as they grew up, they drifted apart from each other as Markle was in an all-girls school. Markle's mother, Doria, still attended the church occasionally, and every time he met her, she would let him know what her daughter was up to.
"She would tell me, Meghan's overseas, or whatever. This was before 'Suits,' and she had been traveling. I think she was modeling. Her mum would say, 'You know, Meg is doing good.' Meghan's mum and my dad are still friends," he revealed. Silverstein eventually achieved success of his own, regularly appearing on 'The Late Late Show with James Corden' among other television shows.
Cinthya, his fiancée, thinks that it is "hysterical" that the first boy the royal bride ever kissed was her soon-to-be husband. Silverstein was happy for Markle, saying, "I think, as long as she's happy, that's great. She's a person marrying a person, and the person she's marrying happens to be a prince."
He said that the status of her husband didn't matter as long as he loved her and made her happy. "Relationships are about being human, so as long as she's found her soulmate, and the person she's with is inspiring her, and loving her for who she is, then good for her," he said.
Silverstein added, "I thought very highly of her, I thought she was a kind, sweet person. She was quirky. At the final theatrical performance for the camp we were both in, we all had to do a presentation where we performed monologues as a character we had made up, and I remember hers being a character that was quirky and silly and awkward. So I think she was a typical American girl. I think she was sweet and nice."
At a young age, the two of them had a strong desire to "strip away the norms" of gender and race, and now Markle has managed to transcend those boundaries in many ways.
He said, "Meghan's heart is in the right place." When asked if he wanted to send a message to Markle, he joked, "You're welcome, Prince Harry!," before adding, "Congratulations is my message. Congratulations and keep smiling!"