George Clooney has told the tale of how he met his future wife, human rights lawyer Amal Alamuddin, when she came to a dinner gathering in Lake Como in July 2013. He was struck by her beauty and intelligence but didn’t know what she thought of him; they exchanged emails after and ultimately started dating in October 2013. Amal’s side of that story is just as rom com-esque, as revealed in a new magazine profile on her.
The setup was the same: Amal went to the dinner, became friends with George, and started emailing with him a lot because she was a big emailer. Apparently George, per the magazine’s writer, “responded with a clownish gambit, writing her repeated notes in the voice of his dog Einstein, who claimed to be trapped in various places and in need of legal rescue.” Okay, George…
Amal later met with her friend and cousin Tarek Miknas in October. “‘I don’t know what to make of it,’” Miknas recalled Amal saying during their meeting. “‘The worst part is, I really like him. And he’s coming tomorrow!’ I said, ‘What are you going to do? It’s not like you can meet in Starbucks and have a chat. It’s not going to be that easy.’ She’s like, ‘I know.’”
She ultimately made a reservation at one of London’s best restaurants, but they went to Abbey Road Studios before, George said. “She said, ‘Let’s go to this place,'” George told The Hollywood Reporter in September.” It was one of those places that was incredibly hip and chic. And when we came out, there were 50 paparazzi there. But she handled it like a champ. And pretty quickly, things escalated once I was in London.”
The escalation, Amal revealed, was they started quietly dating and seeing each other everyday. “It felt like the most natural thing in the world,” she said of falling for George. “Before that experience, I always hoped there could be love that was overwhelming and didn’t require any weighing or decision-making.”
Love, she continued, “it’s the one thing in life that I think is the biggest determinant of happiness, and it’s the thing you have the least control over. Are you going to meet this person? I was 35 when I met him. It wasn’t obvious that it was going to happen for me. And I wasn’t willing or excited about the idea of getting married or having a family in the absence of that.”
Now, the two are married with almost one-year-old twins. Alexander looks like George; Ella looks like Amal. Word-wise, “We’ve had some ‘Mamas’ and ‘Dadas,’ ” Amal said. “George was very careful to ensure that ‘Mama’ was the first word.”
