Free, Melania

by Kate Bennett

  A week later, after she returned from a photo shoot in the Bahamas, Melania called Donald on his office line. She didn’t need to remind him who she was; he was interested and ready to take her out.

  She has said many things about what drew her to him, repeating words like “great chemistry,” “energy,” “vitality” to explain why she was attracted to an older man with a history of being in the tabloids for womanizing and philandering. “Something was there right away.” It’s helpful at this point to remember this was still the late nineties, and Trump was a magnetic figure. His business prowess was legend, and so was his dating life. He was handsome and skinnier back then, and his ego, while overblown, hadn’t reached peak obnoxiousness—this was before The Apprentice. It was also before Twitter. Melania was legitimately curious and, say her friends, attracted. She had never been interested in immature men, and she liked that Trump sort of reminded her of her own father. The two were prone to wearing suits and swooping, slicked-back hairdos.

  Trump took Melania to Moomba on their first date. A restaurant cum lounge space that epitomized the breezy spending habits of Manhattanites in the late 1990s, it was also notoriously hard to land a table there. “You can’t get a Saturday night reservation at Moomba,” wrote restaurant critic Ruth Reichl in The New York Times in April 1998. “I know. I tried for months.” Unless you were famous. If you weren’t, you had to settle on crossing your fingers for a rare opening, eating with the super-uncool kids and wannabes in the early-bird hours before the glitterati (i.e., Donald Trump and pretty girl) were seated in the much more chic 9–10 P.M. window. Reichl bemoaned this for about thirty seconds before realizing that eating ahead of the beautiful people at Moomba had its privileges. “It means that by the time the music becomes a throbbing beast dominating the dreary dining room, you are ready to leave.” (Reichl gave Moomba two stars out of four.)

  Melania would have given it four. She dug it there. “Remember Moomba? It was a great place, wasn’t it?” she said recounting her first date with the Donald. “I remember that night like it was two months ago.”

  Fairly quickly after Moomba, it was evident there was something Donald really liked about Melania. He took her to his Bedford estate in Westchester County, New York, a few days after their first date, driving them himself in his new blue Lamborghini Diablo so she could see the 230-acre property he had purchased three years before for $7.5 million (today it’s estimated to be worth approximately $20 million). Built in 1919 and called Seven Springs, the bucolic private estate includes a fifty thousand square foot main house with fifty bedrooms, three pools, manicured gardens, and room upon room of opulent furnishings—lots of his favorite marble and gold antiques. If he was trying to impress the steely, independent Slovenian, it was working.

  But Trump was sensing something about her, too.

  She was sharp but not opinionated. She was available, but not slutty. She was intelligent, but not a know-it-all. She came around when he wanted her to, but she was not clingy. He didn’t have to excel at having a sense of humor (which was good, because he didn’t have one), nor did he have to ply her with gifts—she wasn’t about that. There was an immediate ease that each felt right away in the other’s company.

  Yet despite the “sparkle,” as she later called the feeling she had in those early days, Melania actually broke up with Trump after a few weeks, having apparently spotted his former flame Kara Young coming out of Trump Tower as Melania was about to go in to meet him. The two had planned a weekend away at Mar-a-Lago, but instead, hurt by the presumed betrayal, she gave him the boot.

  Melania had already been to Trump’s Palm Beach estate at that point and had left items of clothing and other personal effects there for future trips, but now, as Trump’s former butler Anthony Senecal recounted to Ronald Kessler in his book, The Trump White House, “she called me and asked me to please pack up her things and send them back with Mr. Trump, and I said okay. And then I cleared it with him. He said, ‘Do what she wants.’ So I packed up her stuff and they went up on the plane [at the end of the weekend].”

  Young, the model Melania spied leaving Trump’s building, declined to discuss her romantic relationship with Trump for this book, but she did say of her former romantic rival, “She’s a good girl. We had our problems, obviously, then. But we are all grown-ups now.”

  Sometimes the best thing you can do to a guy who hasn’t been dumped is dump him. Trump was shaken. By the time the following week was over, Trump had won back his girl, promising her he would be faithful. For Melania, it was enough.

  As for Trump, when it comes to just about anything, paramount is his perception of what the other guy thinks, and that went for his relationship with Melania. He went on and on about her beauty to his friends, telling them how he had seen “grown men weep” when she walked into a room, sharing a story about a business rival who turned to look at Melania so longingly he fell off his chair—“on his ass,” Trump said. It wasn’t good enough that she had to be beautiful in his eyes; she had to be the most beautiful in everyone else’s eyes as well. Everyone.

  It was behavior Trump had demonstrated before and would repeat again to alarming degrees when he eventually ran for president. But the need to show off his conquests was habitual, it made him tick, it was how he self-soothed. Several years earlier, when he was secretly dating Marla Maples and still married to Ivana, Trump would famously have on hand an actual poster of his hot blond mistress, which he would unfurl at random for friends and business acquaintances, commenting on her beauty and saying the model herself had given it to him. Even if he couldn’t admit it at the time, he still got turned on by the reaction of other people to the woman he was bedding.

  About Melania, Trump did the same. “She is considered beautiful by the other girls,” Trump told Howard Stern. “I mean, they, she’s really considered most beautiful, but she’s beyond beauty; she’s a very nice person.” Moments later, he’s telling Stern that not only does Melania have no cellulite, she doesn’t even know what the word in English means. Notably, while he tells Stern details indicating he can basically pantomime every curve on her body, he gets Melania’s country of origin wrong, proclaiming her “Austrian and Romanian” when Stern asks where she’s from. This particular Stern interview, by the way, took place in November 1999, more than a year after the two met.

  That same month, Trump got some help on the home country of his girlfriend from talk show host Chris Matthews, who hosted Trump for a live town hall–style interview on Hardball at the University of Pennsylvania. Trump at this stage was seriously toying with a presidential run, or at least in his own mind he was; he had become more politically vocal about his opinions. Matthews, a celebrity worshiper who understood how to get ratings, saw the town hall as a chance to kill two birds with one stone. Matthews asked Trump whether he was running for president. “I am. I am,” said Trump. Then a beat later added, “perhaps.” That same year, 1999, Matthews also interviewed actor Warren Beatty, another celebrity interested in getting into politics.

  Known in Washington for losing his composure in the company of pretty women, years later Matthews would be raked over the coals after getting caught on a hot mic on MSNBC drooling over Melania after the Indiana primary during Trump’s presidential campaign. As live video rolls of Trump walking toward the podium, his wife beside him in a clingy sleeveless white sheath dress, Matthews says, breathlessly, “Did you see her walk?” presumably to his panelists and co-anchors, or to no one in particular. “Runway walk. My God is that good. I could watch that runway show.” Brian Williams tries to talk over Matthews so his statement isn’t so flagrant, but the moment makes headlines. Later, in a magazine article, Melania said what she thought of the Matthews in flagrante incident: “Unbelievable!” She lamented that on the campaign she was only considered for her looks. “That’s what I’m saying! I’m not only a beauty. I’m smart. I have brains. I’m intelligent.” Then she sighed at the stupidity of the male sex. “I would just say, men will be men.
”

  Matthews liked Melania back when Trump was just a glimmer of a political somebody, too. At the 1999 town hall event, he asked his guest if he had brought someone special, and Trump called for Melania: “Where is my supermodel?” Trump’s scanning the front of the audience as Melania, on cue, stands up. “Melania. That’s Melania Knauss,” says Trump, showing her off to Matthews, who takes the bait. The two men, both more than two decades older than she, spend a few seconds looking Melania up and down. If Matthews had leaned over to literally pat Trump on the back for his conquest, no one would have been surprised, so thorough was the ogle. “One thing that’s safe to say about you, Donald, is you know the difference between Slovakia and Slovenia,” said Matthews. “I do, I do. Absolutely,” said Trump, who probably didn’t.

  Trump brought Melania into his Howard Stern interview, too, asking the shock jock if he’d like to speak with her, which of course he does. Melania picks up the phone and gets on the air with Stern, who immediately unloads a barrage of embarrassing questions. What’s she wearing? “Ah, not much.” Do the two of them have sex every night? “Even more,” she purrs. And, tellingly, Does she want the mogul to marry her? “I’m not answering that.” When Trump gets back on the phone, Stern ribs him about whether he’ll actually go through with a third marriage. “I’m a little too concerned, Howard, that she may be too smart. I have to be careful.”

  Critics of Melania have called her a stupid model (and let’s not even get into how misogynistic that is), claiming that she’s blind to what her husband is doing. But remember, this is a woman who speaks five languages. She knows that her part—and it is a part—is at times to play the sex-kitten girlfriend of Mr. Big. And it’s a part she plays well. She was not going to let her ticket into the world of the über-rich slip away because at times she was called upon to offer up some ridiculous (and often distasteful) show-and-tell. For a woman in her midtwenties who had spent most of her life either growing up in a communist country—where wearing jeans was a sign of rebellion—or struggling as a very average “average” model, being on the arm of Donald Trump, the king of Manhattan, was probably beyond her wildest dreams. Little would she know just how beyond it would turn out to be.

  6

  The Girlfriend

  “We know what kind of relationship we have. And I don’t think I should be scared of anything.”

  —MELANIA TRUMP

  Melania Knauss endured being Donald Trump’s girlfriend for the next six years—reveled in it, really. It was a position she very much enjoyed, say friends. But other acquaintances ribbed her. It was usually something to the effect of, “Why would this gorgeous, independent woman, young and beautiful, want to be with that womanizing old guy with the weird hair?”

  Her response was often that she liked that Trump was a “real man,” sure of himself, powerful, smart. Viktor Knavs, who was just three years older than his daughter’s boyfriend, was similarly self-assured. Viktor is known for having a large personality and for his charm. “He was pretty successful over there,” Trump has said of his father-in-law. “It’s a different kind of success than you have here. But he was successful.” Some even see a physical resemblance between the two men. Both tend toward portly, like a roomy suit jacket, and have a full head of hair; Knavs, while gray, not blond, also wears his parted to the side. While the wealth and power of Trump were clearly appealing to Melania, he also inspired in her a sense of familiarity. Viktor, like Trump, was a decision-maker. Amalija, Melania’s mother, was strong, too, but it was Viktor who led the family out of the dregs of lower-middle-class life to a more suburban and comfortable existence. Melania adored her father, lionized him, and little did Trump know that Melania’s seeing even a smidge of comparison with Viktor already put Trump ahead of other men Melania had been with.

  As Trump learned about her family, Melania got to know his. She met his three eldest children, Don Jr., Ivanka, and Eric, fairly quickly after they started dating and eventually met Tiffany, who was just six years old at the time. Melania liked spending time with little Tiffany, whose mother’s divorce from Trump was finalized in 1999. She sat with her at the US Open tennis matches, pulling Tiffany onto her lap, playing with her long blond ponytails while Trump, oblivious, sat beside them engrossed in a match. When the couple went to Mar-a-Lago, they sometimes had Tiffany in tow, again with Melania doting on her, making sure the rest of the children felt comfortable, helping preside over holidays like Easter and Thanksgiving. Melania and Tiffany remain close to this day, in part because of the early years after Trump’s divorce from Marla. Melania was around on the rare days Trump had custody of the girl, and that had to have been helpful for Tiffany as she navigated being with her dad without her mom. Melania was, and still is, very conscious of Tiffany’s oddball status in the Trump-children dynamic. Tiffany is the only child of Trump’s second marriage to Marla Maples, with whom he had an affair while still married to Ivana, the mother of Tiffany’s older half siblings. Melania has always tried her best to make Tiffany feel welcomed, loved, and supported—and that all began back in the early days of her dating Trump.

  In June 1999, Melania was close enough to both Trump and his family that he invited her to attend the funeral of his beloved father, Fred Trump, who died of complications from pneumonia at the age of ninety-three. To the service at Marble Collegiate Church on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Melania wore a black lace dress with a deep neckline, her long, dark brown hair loose past her shoulders. For modesty, she had on a black cardigan sweater. Although she didn’t sit with the family, she wasn’t too far behind them at the service, reverent and somber, wearing a large cross necklace. She arrived and left alone.

  By this point, Melania had become Trump’s constant companion, dedicating a lot of her time to being with him, traveling to Mar-a-Lago and listening to him download at the end of the day about business and real estate. She was still working the occasional modeling job, but she was engrossed in being Trump’s girlfriend. Her career, she knew, could only be amplified by her connection with her celebrity boyfriend. That didn’t mean she was comfortable with the idea—she prickled at the thought of someone giving her a job solely because she dated Trump—but she was accepting of its being a side effect of being with him.

  Melania says the two had great chemistry, and that’s why they were together, but the fact is, Melania also liked the power. Dating him had a significant upside for her. She was invited to things; she could walk into a restaurant and be seated at the best tables; she could shop in the best boutiques; she had access to limousines, a helicopter, a beach house, a country house, planes … She might have been physically and emotionally attracted to his looks and his style, but she was also drawn by the intensity with which he was able to make people respond to him and grant him what he wanted.

  Being Donald Trump’s supermodel girlfriend (the “super” became a ubiquitous add-on whenever he spoke of Melania, not necessarily because her work put her anywhere near the league of legitimate “supers” of the era like Cindy Crawford, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, and Christy Turlington) afforded her the exposure and fame as a model that she had trouble getting on her own, with the exception of the passable living she made doing jobs in fit work or advertisements and catalogs.

  In January 2000, Melania had two major spreads in big glossy magazines. Her raciest, for British GQ, was a play on a Bond girl—but in skimpy lingerie, handcuffed to a briefcase of diamonds, firing a weapon while standing on the wing of Trump’s private 757.

  Later, the magazine’s editor would say he was pitched heavily to feature Melania. “We were bombarded by requests” was how Dylan Jones put it. He said Trump was “very keen” to see his girlfriend in a fashion shoot in GQ’s pages. “I guess he was trying to help her modeling career,” said the photographer, Antoine Verglas. GQ didn’t pay Melania for the shoot.

  When Verglas shot the feature, ultimately titled a very innuendoless “Sex at 30,000 Feet: Melania Knauss Earns Her Air Miles,” the editors rushed to g
et prints of the images to Trump for his approval. Verglas wasn’t concerned Trump wouldn’t like them: “She is easy to photograph,” he said of the shoot. “She has no flaws.”

  The text accompanying the photos wasn’t much better in the cliché department, with allusions to the Mile High Club and “in-flight entertainment.” Melania, whose last name was still Knauss, was described as a “delectable” “Slovenian supermodel” and Trump’s “personal hostess.”

  She was also described in the story as being twenty-six, yet when the publication hit stands, she was actually four months shy of her thirtieth birthday.

  The photos themselves are risqué, for sure, but nothing too sensational for a men’s mag like British GQ, especially at the time. It frequently featured spreads of scantily clad or even naked models and actresses in its pages. For her GQ debut, Melania wears white silk panties, a tank top, and a feather jacket in one shot, walking up the stairs of the jet with an expression like she might kill the bad guy or make love to him, depending on how you look at it. In another image she’s on the plane, spilling out of a plunging gold bathing suit, an open briefcase of jewelry in front of her on a white leather couch, and in her hand is a silver revolver. Perhaps the most “fashion” shot is Melania in the cockpit, wearing a fembot-like silver headpiece and a chain-mail dress with dangling silver tags, nothing underneath on top.

  Part of the copy written to accompany the photos reads, “Not only does she manage to keep a man fabled for his erections (the latest is the Trump World Tower on New York’s First Avenue) on the right flight path, but she’s also fluent in four languages. Very handy for those summit meetings.” Of course, 2000 was the year Trump was very seriously considering running for president (again) as an Independent. “She’s popular, she’s brilliant, she’s a wonderful woman,” he says of Melania, “popular” something of an odd description for her, considering that the most anyone had seen of Melania in that past year was on his arm, at red carpet events, and in the pages of GQ.