in the lounge of the Windamere Hotel in Darjeeling, India. He was a recent widower with two sons and a daughter and, at age 36. They were drawn to each other by the similar isolation of their childhoods. Two years later, in 1961, their engagement was announced, but the wedding was put off for more than a year because astrologers in both Sikkim and India warned that 1962 was an inauspicious year for marriages. On March 20, 1963, Cooke married Namgyal in a Buddhist monastery in a ceremony performed by fourteen lamas. Wedding guests included members of Indian royalty, Indian and Sikkimese generals, and the US Ambassador to India, John Kenneth Galbraith. Cooke renounced her United States citizenship as required by Sikkim's laws and also as a demonstration to the people of Sikkim that she was not an "American arm" in the Himalayas. She was dropped from the Social Register but the marriage was reported in National Geographic magazine. The New Yorker followed the royal couple on one of their yearly trips to the United States. Although her husband was Buddhist, Cooke did not officially convert from Christianity to Buddhism though she had practiced Buddhism from an early age (Henry Kissinger once remarked "she has become more Buddhist than the population"). Namgyal was crowned monarch of Sikkim on April4, 1965. However, their marriage faced strains, and both had affairs: he with a married Belgian woman, and she with an American friend. At the same time, Sikkim was under strain due to annexation pressures from India. Crowds marched on the palace against the monarchy. Cooke's husband was deposed on April10, 1975 and confined to his palace under house arrest. The couple soon separated. Cooke returned to Manhattan, where she raised her children, Palden and Hope Leezum. In May 1975, Representative James W. Symington (D-MO) and Senator Mike Mansfield (D-MT) sponsored private bills to restore her citizenship; however, after the bill passed the Senate, several members of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration objected, and the bill had to be amended to grant her only U.S. permanent resident status before it could gain their support and pass Congress. President Gerald Ford signed the bill into law on June16, 1976. By 1981 she still had not been able to regain U.S. citizenship. The royal couple divorced in 1980, and Namgyal died of cancer in 1982 in New York City. Later life With child