Melania Trump: what type of First Lady will she be?

Melania Trump: what type of First Lady will she be?
The Telegraph: World News
The Telegraph: World News
20 minutes ago

Mrs Trump was born Melania Knavs in the town of Sevnica, around an hour outside the Slovenian capital, to Amalija, who worked developing patterns at a children’s clothing factory, and Viktor, the chauffeur for a nearby town’s mayor.

“I love my childhood,” she told GQ. “It was a beautiful childhood.”

The family grew up in Communist Yugoslavia, but were more worldly than most – holidaying in France, Italy and Germany, and devouring European fashion magazines.

A studious, quiet girl she got her break as a model in Slovenia, before moving to New York to follow her dream in 1996.  But she was not a party girl.

“She was reserved,” said Edit Molnar, a former model who was the then-Miss Knauss’s friend. She had Germanicised her name from Knavs for modelling work.

“The first party she ever came to with me was the one she met Donald at.”

That was a party hosted by Paolo Zampolli, a model agent, at the Kit Kat Club during New York Fashion Week in 1998. She was 28; he was 52, and separated from his second wife, Marla Maples.

It was love at first sight for Mr Trump, but when he tried to get her number she refused, asking that he give her his instead.

“I am not a girl who will just give away the number to anybody,” she later told The New York Times.

“I’m not starstruck,” she said in another interview. “We had a great connection, we had great chemistry, but I was not starstruck. And maybe he noticed that.”

He soon won her over, though.