Who Is Melania Trump?
Melania Trump is a former model who served as first lady of the United States from 2017 to 2021 during the presidency of her husband, Donald Trump. Born and raised in present-day Slovenia, Melania started her modeling career as a teenager and eventually graced the covers of several international magazines. She and Donald met after she moved to New York in the 1990s. The couple married in 2005 and share a son, Barron. As the first foreign-born U.S. first lady since Louisa Adams in the 1820s, Melania championed children’s well-being as well as curbing online bullying and opioid abuse. She released a self-titled memoir in October 2024.
Where Is Melania Trump From?
Melanija Knavs, germanized as Melania Knauss, was born on April 26, 1970, in Novo Mesto, Slovenia (then part of communist Yugoslavia). Her father, Viktor, was a car dealer, and her mother, Amalija, was a designer for children’s clothing.
Melania grew up in a modest home with her younger sister, Ines, and later discovered she had an older half-brother, Denis, whom her father had in a previous relationship. Melania moved to Ljubljana (today, Slovenia’s capital city) as a teenager where she attended high school. It was then that she started developing an interesting modeling.
In 1996, Melania’s modeling career prompted her to moved to the United States. She was granted a green card for permanent residency in March 2001 through the EB-1 program, nicknamed the “Einstein visa” due to its allocation to top academics, business leaders, Oscar-winning actors, and others who demonstrate “extraordinary ability.” She officially became an American citizen in 2006.
In early 2018, as her husband Donald Trump’s administration sought to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, some critics questioned whether Melania was deserving of her past participation in the EB-1 program. That August, it was reported that Melania’s parents, Viktor and Amalija, had been granted U.S. citizenship and that the first lady had sponsored them for their green cards, a process at odds with the president’s proposal of a “merit-based” system that sought to curb sponsorship for family members.
Marriage with Donald Trump
Melania met her future husband, Donald Trump, at a New York fashion party in 1998. Although she refused to date him at first, they eventually established a relationship the following year before briefly breaking up in 2000. The couple soon got back together and were engaged in April 2004.
Melania and Donald—then 34 and 58, respectively—married in a lavish ceremony in Palm Beach, Florida, in January 2005. Their celebrity guests included Shaquille O’Neal, Barbara Walters, Kelly Ripa, Matt Lauer, and Katie Couric. Following their wedding, Melania Knauss officially changed her name to Melania Trump.
