Melania Trump
Melania Knauss Trump is a Slovenian and American former model and the third wife of President Donald Trump. She has served as First Lady of the United States since 2025, a role she previously held from 2017 to 2021.
Melanija Knavs was born in Yugoslavia, where she began working as a fashion model at the age of 16 while pursuing her education. She changed the spelling of her name to Melania Knauss and traveled to Paris and Milan to seek modeling work before meeting Paolo Zampolli, who hired her and sponsored her immigration to the United States in 1996. She worked as a model in Manhattan, where she began dating Donald Trump shortly after Zampolli introduced them in 1998. Donald worked to get Melania more modeling jobs, and she supported him during his 2000 presidential campaign. They married in 2005, and the following year had a son, Barron Trump. Melania started her own jewelry brand, Melania, in 2009.
After encouraging Donald to run for president in the 2016 presidential election, Melania made only rare campaign appearances, opting instead to help Donald with strategy. She received major press coverage during the campaign when erotic photos from her modeling years were uncovered and published, and again when a speech she gave at the 2016 Republican National Convention was found to be plagiarized from a similar speech by Michelle Obama. In the month leading up to the election, she defended her husband following the release of the Access Hollywood tape that mired his campaign in scandal.
Melania is the first naturalized citizen and the first non-native English speaker to become first lady; the second foreign-born first lady, after Louisa Adams; the second Roman Catholic first lady, after Jacqueline Kennedy; and the second to hold the position nonconsecutively, after Frances Cleveland. For the early months of her tenure as first lady, she stayed in Manhattan to allow Barron to finish school there and to renegotiate her prenuptial agreement. She kept to minimal official activity after moving into the White House and held fewer events than previous first ladies.
Melania faced several challenges in 2018, including allegations of extramarital affairs committed by her husband, surgery for kidney disease, and a tour of Africa that was overshadowed by scrutiny of her wardrobe and personal conduct.
As first lady, Melania prioritized children's issues, launching the Be Best campaign to promote children's welfare and visiting many children's hospitals. She was also a close advisor to her husband, influencing his decisions to end the Trump administration's family separation policy and to ban fruit-flavored electronic cigarette cartridges. In the final months of her initial tenure as first lady, Melania endorsed her husband's false claims of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. After leaving the White House in 2021, she largely stayed out of the public view before assuming the role of first lady again in 2025.
Early life and education
Melanija Knavs was born on April 26, 1970, in Novo Mesto, a city in the Lower Carniola region of Slovenia, then part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Her father, Viktor Knavs, first worked as a chauffeur; eventually, he sold car parts for a state-owned vehicle manufacturer as he made connections with the League of Communists of Yugoslavia. Her mother, Amalija Knavs, worked as a patternmaker at the children's clothing manufacturer Jutranjka in Sevnica. In Sevnica, the family lived in the state-run housing complex Naselje Heroja Maroka. Melanija has an older sister, Ines, and an older half-brother from her father's previous relationship, Denis Cigelnjak, whom she reportedly has never met. Her father denied paternity of Denis even after it was confirmed by a paternity test.The family was well-off relative to most who lived in communist societies. They frequently went on vacations to other parts of Europe. Their apartment was typically decorated with brightly colored walls.
As a child, Melanija, like other children of workers at the factory, participated in fashion shows that featured children's clothing. Textiles were Sevnica's primary industry. Students were excused from school to participate in the shows. From a young age, Melanija expressed an interest in fashion, and she began customizing and sewing her own clothes. She developed a skill for it by watching her mother work. Melanija did well in school, where she was appointed school treasurer.
When Melanija was a teenager, she moved to a two-story house in Sevnica with her family. From her youth in Slovenia, Melanija was influenced by the United States. She described the presidency of Ronald Reagan as the beginning of a new era in her own country. Of particular interest to Melanija was the new exposure to global fashion. At the age of fifteen, she began attending the Secondary School for Design and Photography in Ljubljana, making the long commute from her hometown to the capital and back each day by train. After her first year, she and Ines moved to the capital together in an apartment paid for by their father. After graduating at age nineteen, Melanija enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture and Civil and Geodetic Engineering at the University of Ljubljana to further study design, leaving after a few months without finishing her degree. Her official website had stated that she had obtained that degree, which was false, a claim removed in mid-2016.
Early modeling career
European career
Melania was discovered by Slovenian fashion photographer Stane Jerko when she was sixteen, after modeling in a school-sponsored show. At the time, she had wanted to be a fashion designer rather than a model. Melania won a modeling contest with the Italian studio Cinecittà that entitled her to a movie role, but she rejected the prize after a producer sexually propositioned her. As her modeling career progressed, Melania took on an alternate spelling of her name, Melania Knauss. She traveled Europe to find modeling work. Except for a few close relatives, she did not maintain contact with anyone she knew in Slovenia. In 1992, Melania was named runner-up in the Jana Magazine Look of the Year contest, which promised its top three contestants an international modeling contract. She signed with RVR Reclame in Milan, but she left the organization a few months later.Melania spent the following years traveling Europe for modeling jobs, including one in which she portrayed the first female president of the United States in 1993. Around age 23 or 24, she made Paris her primary residence, where she lived with her roommate Victoria Silvstedt. Melania modeled for fashion houses in Paris and Milan, where in 1995 she met Metropolitan Models co-owner Paolo Zampolli, who was on a scouting trip in Europe. Zampolli, a friend of her future husband Donald Trump, became one of the few people who was involved in Melania's life for a long time.
Relocating to New York
Zampolli urged Melania to travel to the United States, where he said he would like to represent her. In 1996, Melania moved to Manhattan. By this time, she was already 26 years old, much older than most aspiring models. Zampolli encouraged Melania to live near and socialize with people in the fashion industry, and he arranged for her to share an apartment with photographer Matthew Atanian in Zeckendorf Towers in Union Square. Her rent was taken from her pay with Zampolli's agency. Once she resided in the United States, she made only rare and brief visits to her country of origin. She lived a healthy lifestyle, managing her diet carefully, and she avoided the drinking and partying that often consumed the lives of the models around her. She did not lead an active social life and rarely went out. Melania was featured in a nude photo shoot for a 1997 issue of Max, a French men's magazine, with another female model. The photos were shot by the photographer Alexandre Ale de Basseville, and the work was unpaid, instead promising Melania exposure in a prominent magazine. The photos were largely forgotten until they were published by the New York Post in 2016.For her first weeks in the United States, her travel visa did not allow her to work in the country. Despite this, she accepted ten modeling jobs that earned her approximately $20,000. She then received an H-1B visa that allowed her to work. She received her first major job when she posed for a Camel cigarette ad shot by Ellen von Unwerth, which was displayed as a Times Square billboard and ran in Rolling Stone. The opportunity was facilitated by a law that restricted cigarette ads to only depict people above the age of 25, excluding most aspiring models. When her roommate Atanian left New York, Melania moved to an apartment off of Park Avenue.
Marriage and family
Meeting Donald Trump
In September 1998, Zampolli introduced Melania to the real estate mogul Donald Trump at a party. Donald had a date to the event, Celina Midelfart. When he asked Melania for her phone number, she refused. Instead, she insisted that he give her his own number. He passed her test when he gave her multiple personal numbers instead of an office number. She later said that giving her own number would make her "just one of the women he calls". The exact details of when and where this took place are unclear, though the Kit Kat Club is often described as where they met.After a week, Melania called Donald and they went on a date. She intentionally responded with indifference to his advances, knowing this would pique his interest. Not only was Donald's personality similar to that of Melania's father, but they were of similar ages and had similar physical appearances. When they began dating, Melania had access to his book Trump: The Art of the Comeback, in which he detailed what he wanted from a relationship.
Melania held a press conference on September 8, spending the event recounting her successes and telling reporters that she was "world famous", "among the top 50" highest-paid models in the world, and set to appear in a movie alongside Mickey Rourke. The intention was to build her profile in anticipation of another, ultimately unsuccessful, cigarette ad campaign. This was unusual behavior for a woman who typically kept a quiet and professional presence, and reporters were unable to verify the claims she made. The Trumps have stated that they met at the New York Fashion Week shortly after this conference but, according to biographer Mary Jordan, rumors in the industry suggested that their relationship had already developed by then. Their relationship initially only lasted a few weeks. Melania left Donald after she saw his ex-girlfriend Kara Young leaving Trump Tower, but she reunited with him the following week.