Meghan Markle’s mom, Doria Ragland, had an artsy outing in California.
Doria, 66, was spotted in Beverly Hills on Thursday attending an exhibition by artist Honor Titus followed by a dinner at a local restaurant. It appeared that her daughter, Meghan, and son-in-law, Prince Harry, did not join her on the outing.
Meghan and Doria share a close relationship and have given glimpses of their bond through the years.
“Meghan draws a lot of strength from her mother. Doria is classy, chic and confident, but not unapproachable,” Meghan’s longtime friend and makeup artist Daniel Martin told PEOPLE in 2018. “I definitely feel Meghan gets a lot of that from her mother.”
When Meghan and Prince Harry were living in the U.K., Doria often traveled from her home in California to visit her daughter and son-in-law during milestone moments like their 2018 royal wedding and the birth of their first child, son Archie, in 2019. Doria stayed with the couple at Frogmore Cottage to assist them during their early days as parents.
Doria also supported her daughter at a celebration marking the publication of Together: Our Community Cookbook, which Meghan helped create to benefit those affected by the Grenfell Tower fire tragedy. The proud mom stood next to Prince Harry and watched as Meghan gave an off-the-cuff speech about the project, at one point exchanging a smile with her son-in-law.
Doria spoke out publicly for the first time in the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, which debuted in December.
Recalling how Meghan, 41, first told her she was dating the member of the royal family, Doria said, “We were on the phone and she says, ‘Mommy, I’m going out with Prince Harry,’ and I start whispering, ‘Oh my God.’ ”
“And so it was from the beginning, it was very sort of, ‘Oh my God, nobody can know,’ ” she continued.
Of Prince Harry, 38, Doria said she noticed he was “handsome” and “really nice” upon first meeting him, with “really great manners.” She added, “And they looked really happy together.”
However, Doria also admitted that it had been “challenging.”
“I felt unsafe a lot. I can’t just go walk my dogs. I can’t just go to work. There was always someone there waiting for me,” she explained.
In May, Doria joined Meghan and Prince Harry at the Ms. Foundation’s Women of Vision Awards at Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City. (A spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex told PEOPLE the following day that Prince Harry, Meghan and her mother were involved in a “near catastrophic car chase” while being pursued by “a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi” following the ceremony.)
During her speech at the event, Meghan recalled seeing the diversity in the pages of Ms. magazines. Her mom, Meghan said, “had a subscription and having these pages in our home, it signaled to me that there was just so much more than the dolled-up covers and the images that you would see on the grocery store covers.”
“It signaled to me that substance mattered,” the Duchess of Sussex added.
