MELANIA TRUMP’S | Sof Power
FIRST DATE Donald Trump met Melania at a fashion week party, right, in New York in 1998. It sparked a whirlwind romance that ended with a grand wedding at Mar-a-Lago in 2005. Trump told CNN he knew he was ready to marry her after five years of dating. “It was obvious,” he said. The year before they wed, Melania attended a Marc Jacobs fashion show, below, with her mother, Amalija.
Her ability to speak multiple languages — Slo-
venian, English, French, Italian, and German — helped her succeed in the cutthroat fashion industry. According to Melania Trump biographer Bo-
jan Pozar, author of The Inside Story: The Potential First Lady, which examines her early years, it was her determination in the face of long odds that al- lowed her to rise to prominence. “Melania comes from a working-class family in
Communist Yugoslavia, and she certainly never dreamed that she would become the fi rst lady of the United States,” Pozar told Newsmax. “In this sense, it is a fascinating and probably
unrepeatable life story of a girl from Brežice, who wanted to become a successful model, but at that time she did not particularly stand out in Slovenia.” He added, “She was ambitious and brave
enough to actually go abroad at a very young age and stay there. The vast majority of aspiring Slove- nian models who tried their luck mainly in Milan, the center of Italian fashion, like Melania, quickly returned home.” It was at a New York Fashion Week party in 1998
that Melania fi rst met Donald Trump. A whirlwind romance ended with a grand wedding at Mar-a- Lago in 2005, attended by celebrities like Billy Joel and Hillary Clinton. In 2005, in their fi rst interview as newlyweds,
Donald Trump revealed that he knew he was ready to marry Melania after fi ve years of dating, telling CNN, “It was obvious.” “We were together for fi ve years. We literally
have never had an argument, or . . . forget about the word fi ght, we never had an argument. We just are very compatible, we get along, and I just thought it was time,” Trump said. In a profi le interview published in Harper’s Ba-
zaar during her husband’s presidential campaign, Melania emphasized the importance of maintain- ing individual identities in her relationship. “I give him my opinions, and sometimes he
takes them in, and sometimes he does not. “Do I agree with him all the time? No. I think it
is good for a healthy relationship. I am not a ‘yes’ person. No matter who you are married to, you still need to lead your life. “I don’t want to change him. And he doesn’t want to change me.”
2004 1998
PREVIOUS PAGE: SLOVENIA/JURE MAKOVEC/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES / MELANIA AS A CHILD/STR/NENA BEDEK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES / HOUSE/JURE MAKOVEC/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES / BUILDING/JURE MAKOVEC/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES MELANIA AND MOTHER/STEPHEN LOVEKIN/FILMMAGIC/GETTY IMAGES / MELANIA AND DONALD TRUMP/ROSE HARTMAN/GETTY IMAGES
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