Doria Ragland

Doria Loyce Ragland was born on September 2, 1956, in Cleveland, Ohio to nurse Jeanette Arnold (1929–2000) and her second husband Alvin Azell Ragland (1929–2011),^[3] an antiques dealer who sold items at flea markets.^[4] Ragland's maternal grandparents, James and Nettie Arnold, worked at the Hotel St. Regis on Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, he as a bellhop and she as an elevator operator,^[3][5][6] while her great-grandfather, Jeremiah Ragland, had his own tailor shop business in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the 1920s where he worked as a presser.^[7]

Her parents moved to Los Angeles when she was a baby^[3] and later divorced. In 1983, her father married kindergarten teacher Ava Burrow,^[8] who is near Ragland's age; the two remained close after that marriage also ended in divorce.^[9] Ragland has two older maternal half-siblings, Joseph (known as "JJ"; 1949–2021) and Saundra Johnson (born 1952), and a younger paternal half-brother, Alvin Joffrey Ragland.^[10]

Various contemporary records state that the Ragland family descended from Richard "Dick" Ragland, born into slavery c.1792 in Chatham County, North Carolina; his son Stephen Ragland (1848–1926) of Jonesboro in Georgia, lived long enough to experience the abolition of slavery in 1865. The family's Ragland surname came from slave-owner William Ragland, a Methodist planter and land speculator who had emigrated during the eighteenth century from Cornwall, England to North America.^[11][12] Doria's daughter Meghan Markle has claimed that a genealogy test revealed that she is 43% Nigerian.^[13]

After leaving Fairfax High School,^[4] Ragland worked as a temporary assistant makeup artist on the set of the television show General Hospital where she met future ex-husband Thomas Markle Sr.^[14] She worked as a travel agent and owned a small business.^[15] After divorcing Markle, Ragland completed her undergraduate degree, a Bachelor of Arts in psychology.^[4] In 2011, she earned a Master of Social Work (MSW) from the University of Southern California.^[16] After registering as an Associate Social Worker, she was employed as a social worker for three years at the Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services Clinic in Culver City.^{[17][18][19][20]} Ragland has also worked as a yoga instructor.^[21] In 2020, it was reported that she would teach a jewelry making course at Santa Monica College.^[22] In the same year, Ragland became CEO, CFO and secretary of a care home firm in Beverly Hills, called Loving Kindness Senior Care Management.^[23]

Ragland married lighting director Thomas Markle on December 23, 1979, at Hollywood's Paramahansa Yogananda Self-Realization Fellowship Temple in a ceremony performed by Brother Bhaktananda.^[24][16] Their daughter Meghan was born in 1981. The couple separated when their daughter was two years old.^[25] They divorced in 1987.^[21][26]

Ragland resides in View Park–Windsor Hills, California,^[27][28] in a house inherited from her father in 2011.^[4] She has accompanied Meghan to public events and attended her 2018 wedding to Prince Harry at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, Berkshire.^[29][30] Ragland became a grandmother on May 6, 2019. She flew to the United Kingdom to see her grandson, Prince Archie of Sussex, and his parents.^[31] In July, she attended Prince Archie's christening at the private chapel at Windsor Castle.^[31] Her granddaughter, Princess Lilibet of Sussex, was born on June 4, 2021, in Santa Barbara, California.^[32]

• "(Almost) Straight Outta Compton", a 2016 tabloid article headline about Meghan Markle and her mother's background