Donald Trump and Melania Trump (née Knauss) first met in September 1998 when she, as Vanity Fair recalled, “captured the attention” of the mogul at a Fashion Week event. Donald was there with his rumored squeeze Celina Midelfart, having just recently separated from his second wife, Marla Maples. That didn’t stop the 52-year-old from hitting on 28-year-old Melania, though. Donald asked the Slovenian model for her number, but she played the notorious player, insisting instead that he hand his digits over to her.
Not before long, they went on their first date. “I remember that night like it was two months ago,” Melania told Harper’s Bazaar. However, as a friend of Melania told GQ, early into their budding relationship, the couple split due to her “trust issues.” But they soon reunited, and in 2005 they wed in an over-to-top ceremony at Mar-a-Largo. As GQ recounted, Melania wore a “$100,000 Dior dress that laborers’ hands had toiled upon for a legendary 550 hours, affixing 1,500 crystals.”
“We are standing by each other and we are equal in the relationship,” Melania told Tatler the year they married. “And we support each other, you know. We always believe, both of us, that woman behind a man and man behind a woman.” Meanwhile, before they tied the knot, Donald confirmed to Howard Stern (via BuzzFeed) he’d yet to hear Melania “[make] a doody.”