Sometimes the greatest royal love stories begin in the most ordinary place - at an airport. That's how the story of Noor and King Hussein of Jordan began, one of those weddings still remembered today, nearly half a century later, for its simplicity, not its splendour.

Born Lisa Najeeb Halaby in Washington in 1951, of Syrian, Scottish, English, and Swedish descent, she studied architecture at Princeton before moving to Amman and going to work for an Arab airline. She first photographed the king at an airport in 1976. They met at the opening of „Queen Alia" International Airport, the friendship grew into love, and on May 13, 1978 Hussein proposed. Exactly one month later they married. She converted to Islam and took the name Noor al-Hussein - „the light of Hussein."

For the wedding, Noor wore a simple silk Dior dress - white, with gathered sleeves and no train - even though she had originally dreamed of a more relaxed, bohemian style. She tied her hair back in a half-gathered natural style, with a flower crown and a simple thin veil. The most interesting detail was the shoes: because she was five centimetres taller than Hussein, heels were out of the question, so a shoemaker from Beirut made her flat shoes that arrived only on the morning of the wedding.

The ceremony itself, at the Zahran Palace, lasted just five minutes. By Muslim tradition, Noor was the only woman present, and the witnesses were Hussein's two brothers and her father. She wasn't given the title of princess - she became queen directly, the first American queen of an Arab nation. The rite was followed by a reception for over 500 guests. The marriage lasted until Hussein's death from cancer in 1999 and produced four children. She won over the scepticism of a conservative society slowly, with years of devotion - proof that even royal marriages sometimes begin as ordinary love and prove themselves only over time.