Melania Trump was born Melanija Knavs in 1970, in a small town in Slovenia, in what was then Communist Yugoslavia. Her mother worked at a dressmaking factory, which fostered her daughter’s love of fashion, while her father was a chauffeur.
Melania had her first photo shoot with a local photographer when she was 16, and that led to her signing a modelling contract in Italy.
She had success in Milan and Paris but when she was 26 she decided to move to the US to further her career, and it was there that she first met Donald Trump in nightclub in 1998. She was 28, he was 52.
“I didn’t know much about Donald Trump,” Melania later told GQ of their first meeting. “I had my life, I had my world. I didn’t follow Donald Trump and what kind of life he had.”
It was no surprise that it was a model that had caught the businessman’s eye. Trump has a major thing for models – both his first and second wives, Ivana Trump and Marla Maples, were successful models when they began dating.
In keeping with his reputation as a womanizer, the first time Trump met Melania and tried to ask her out, he was on a date with another woman.
According to GQ magazine, he was out with Norwegian cosmetics heiress Celina Midelfart at the Kit Kat Club when he spied a young Melania across the room. He waited until his date went to the bathroom before he approached his future wife.
But initially, Melania turned him down. “He came to the party with a date! I had heard he was a ladies’ man, and so I said, ‘I’m not one of the ladies,’” she told Time magazine editors in the book, Donald Trump: The Rise of a Rule Breaker.
So Melania didn’t fall for his charms straight away. In fact, she refused to give him her phone number. “I tried to get her number, and she wouldn’t give it to me,” he told Time.
Instead, she agreed to take his number, in order to stand out from other women she assumed he was dating. “If I give him my number, I’m just one of the women he calls,” she explained.
“I wanted to see what his intention is. It tells you a lot from the man what kind of number he gives you. He gave me all of his numbers.”
To prove he was serious about getting to know Melania, the entrepreneur gave her his home number in New York, his Florida holiday home and the direct line to his office.
She took a week to phone him, apparently in an attempt to prove she wasn’t dazzled by his millions. “We had a great connection, we had great chemistry, but I was not starstruck. And maybe he noticed that,” she told GQ.
They began dating and became one of New York society’s most high-profile couples. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing, and at one point Melania is said to have broken off the relationship due to trust issues.
But all was well in 2004 when Trump proposed with a 12-carat diamond ring. The happy couple got married the following year at his property in Palm Beach, Florida, and their son Barron was born in 2006.
The secret to their relationship is said to be that the couple have never shared a bathroom. According to US Weekly, they also have separate bedrooms in the White House, to ensure the president gets his beauty sleep.