Hope Cooke
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Hope Cooke (born San Francisco, California, June 24, 1940) is a New York tour guide and historian who married the 12th Chogyal (King), of the then-independent Kingdom of Sikkim (today part of India) in the Himalayas on March 20, 1963.
Her father was John J. Cooke. Her mother was the former Hope Noyes, an amateur aviator who may have committed suicide by purposefully crashing her plane. After her parents' divorce, Cooke was raised by her maternal grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. Winchester Noyes, and following their deaths, she became the ward of her uncle Selden Chapin, a former U.S. ambassador to Iran.
In 1959, Cooke, then a freshman at Sarah Lawrence, met Palden Thondup Namgyal, Crown Prince of Sikkim, in the bar of the Windamere Hotel in Darjeeling, India. He was then a widower nearly twice her age.
Four years later, Cooke, an Episcopalian, married the Crown Prince in a Buddhist monastery. He became monarch of Sikkim in 1965 but was deposed in 1973 and confined to his palace under house arrest. The couple had two children, Palden and Hope Leezum.
The Chogyal and his wife separated soon after he was overthrown, and she moved to Manhattan, where she raised her children. The royal couple divorced in 1980, and the Chogyal died of cancer in 1982.
Cooke has since remarried and is a tour guide in New York City.