Meet the new girl. Melania Trump is set to be the country’s next First Lady after her husband, Donald Trump, made a surprising victory in this year’s presidential election against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Learn more about Melania in the video above!
Ahead of Melania’s move from New York City to the White House in Washington, D.C., Us Weekly Video rounded up a handful of fast facts about Michelle Obama’s successor.
The 46-year-old was born on April 26, 1970, as Melania Knauss in Novo Mesto, Slovenia. At 16 years old, she tried her hand at modeling and eventually dropped out of the University of Ljubljana to focus on her career.
Her decision to call it quits on a higher education seemingly paid off. Melania has since appeared on the covers of major magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar Bulgaria and Vogue. Stripping down to her birthday suit has also played a part in Melania’s professional pursuits. In 1995, she posed nude for a steamy girl-on-girl shoot for Max Magazine, a now-defunct French men’s monthly. And in 2000, she appeared topless in a super saucy spread in British GQ.
In the midst of her modeling jobs, the brunette beauty met Trump, now 70, at a New York fashion party in 1998. Seven years later, the pair got married in a lavish wedding ceremony held at Donald’s Palm Beach, Florida, estate, Mar-a-Lago. For the January 2005 event (which Bill and Hillary Clinton attended), Melania — Donald’s third wife after Ivana Trump and Marla Maples — wore a Dior dress worth a whopping $100,000 and draped with 1,500 crystals.
Fast-forward 11 years and her business mogul hubby is making a bid for the Oval Office. Back in July, Melania made a talked-about speech in support of Trump at the Republican National Convention. Though expectations were high, the mom of one — she shares son Barron, 10, with the real estate tycoon — was lambasted for directly quoting parts of a 2008 speech made by Mrs. Obama at the Democratic National Convention.
“My parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise; that you treat people with respect,” Melania, the first foreign-born First Lady since Louisa Adams, wife of 6th POTUS John Quincy Adams, said in her speech.
The sentence was almost identical to one in Obama’s 2008 speech where she said, “Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect.”
For more about Melania, her stance on Donald’s controversial comments about women and her proposed plan to fight cyber-bullying, watch the video above.
