The Future King Charles Once Charmed St. Louis at the Arch [PHOTOS]

Before he met and married a young woman who came to loathe him, before he had sons who ended up in a bitter feud, before the tell-all memoir that revealed him as a distant father who nevertheless still slept with a teddy bear, King Charles III came to St. Louis. And he liked it!

Visiting the Old Courthouse and Gateway Arch in 1977, then-Prince Charles told the assembly, “I am very grateful that I shall take back all sorts of happy memories to the queen and tell her that all is right in this part of the globe.”

Was he delusional? Or were things pretty good in this neck of the woods 46 years ago? We'll leave that one to you .... although it's worth nothing that not only kings-in-training but popes used to come to these parts. The halcyon days!

And so the following images — captured by freelance photographer Tom Sullivan, a University City resident who shot the event for the British Consulate — show our very own local stop on 31-year-old Charles' goodwill tour through the U.S.

And we'll tell you this: The young prince looks happy. 

He surely had no idea all of the drama ahead of him — the marriage to the wrong woman, the thankless task of being heir to throne for another four and a half decades, the illegally recorded phone calls that saw him dreaming of being a tampon to his mistress, the fact that he'd inherit the job only as the empire seemed to be falling apart.

All he knew was that it was one hell of a catenary arch, one beautiful day, one gorgeous group of St. Louisans.

We wish Charles III the best on his coronation Saturday.