Melania Knauss Trump (born Melanija Knavs; April 26, 1970) 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. She 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 first lady to hold the position nonconsecutively, after Frances Cleveland.
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; Zampolli hired her and sponsored her immigration to the United States in 1996. She worked as a model in Manhattan, where Zampolli introduced her to Donald Trump in 1998. She began dating Donald Trump shortly thereafter. Trump worked to get Melania more modeling jobs, and she supported him during his 2000 presidential campaign. Melania and Donald Trump married in 2005, and they had a son, Barron Trump, the following year. Melania started her own jewelry brand, Melania, in 2009.
After encouraging Donald to run for president in the 2016 presidential election, Melania only made rare campaign appearances, instead opting 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 stayed in Manhattan for the first months of her tenure as first lady, to allow Barron to finish school there and to renegotiate her prenuptial agreement. She kept to minimal 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. During her tenure 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.
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