She once walked the runways of Milan, and she’s now walking the halls of the White House.
One thing most people can agree on about Melania Trump is that she’s far from ordinary. Her journey from a small-town girl in Slovenia to one of the most recognizable First Ladies in the US feels almost like something out of a Hollywood script.
Melania and her sister Ines were born in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, but grew up in the small railway town of Sevnica. Their father, Viktor, who was a car mechanic and chauffeur, and their mother, Amalija, who worked as a pattern-maker at a clothing factory, were able to provide a good life for their daughters.
“I grew up with a beautiful family and had a wonderful childhood,” Melania Trump said. “My mother and father taught us the importance of education, hard work and family.”
At the age of 16, Melania was scouted by fashion photographer Stane Jerko who spotted her leaning on a fence while leaving a fashion show at the Festival Hall.
“By the staircase at the entrance, I saw this girl,” Jerko recalled. “She was tall, slim, with long hair. I told her who I was, what I did, and why I would photograph her.”
It was back in 1987 when young Melania decided to drop out of the University of Ljubljana and focus on modeling instead. It took her only a year to get a contract with a modeling agency in Milan.
Once in Milan, Melania focused on her goal of making a name for herself and went home after work instead of partying.
“She kept to herself, she was a loner. After a shoot or a catwalk, she went home, not out. She didn’t want to waste time partying,” Jerko said.
At a Kit Kat Club event during the New York Fashion Week in 1998, Italian businessman Paolo Zampolli brought a friend, Donald Trump. He was with a date that night, but when he saw Melania, he immediately wanted to know more about her.
One of Melania’s friends, Edit Molnar, spoke of that night and explained that Donald asked Melania for her number, but she didn’t give it to him because he wasn’t alone. “Melania said, ‘He’s here with a woman. I am absolutely not giving him my number,’” Molnar told New York Post. “She wouldn’t even consider it. Donald did all the work.”
Melania also spoke of the night she first met Donald Trump. “He wanted my number,” she told Tatler. “But he was on a date, so of course I didn’t give it to him. I said, ‘I am not giving you my number; give me yours and I will call you.’ If I give him my number, I’m just one of the women he calls.”
Zampolli, who now serves as a US Ambassador for Global Partnerships, added: “She never dated anyone in New York before Donald. She only went to movies by herself and to the gym.
“This is a woman who modeled for Camel cigarettes on a huge billboard in Times Square but stayed home all the time,” Zampolli said. “She was not a party girl.”
Melania Trump married Donald Trump in a glamorous Mar-a-Lago wedding in January 2005, and the couple welcomed their son, Barron Trump, in 2006.
But, who were the men in her life before Donald?
Peter Butoln is among the first men to be publicly connected to Melania Trump, claiming he was her teenage boyfriend during her years in Slovenia.
“It was my first love. My first real love,” Butoln said in an interview with Inside Edition.
He shared that they met when Melania moved to Ljubljana at 17 to attend design school, and said he was instantly drawn to her when he first saw her in the city center.
“I saw her in a crowd of girls, and she was the most beautiful girl,” he said.
Their relationship reportedly came to an end when he went off for military service. He added that their last contact was in 1987, when Melania sent him a postcard that read: “I send you this postcard with nice warm regards from the seaside.”
A spokesperson for the former First Lady later rejected his claims, stating that he was never her official boyfriend.
#10year #anniversary 💍 @melaniatrump ❤️ @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/rsa7cLdKrM
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) January 22, 2015
Another man linked to Melania Trump’s past is Jure Zorcic, who says he met her in 1991.
According to Zorcic, he was riding his motorcycle when he noticed her walking down the street and decided to turn back to speak to her. “I had a moment and thought, ‘Wow, who is this girl? She is so beautiful,’” he recalled to ABC News.
“We met each other like in a movie,” said Zorcic. “I was on my motorbike, and she has been walking down a street. As I passed by her, I had a moment and thought, ‘Wow, who is this girl? She is so beautiful, I must turn back and follow her.’”
He said they went for coffee and started dating, spending a few months together and even going on trips with friends along the Croatian coast.
Years later, Melania moved abroad to pursue modeling in Milan and Paris.
“It was a bit of shock when I met her,” he told ABC. “She is very special, that’s the truth.”
The two later ran into each other again in New York in 2000, where Melania greeted him in English.
“I asked her: Did you forget that you are Slovenian?” he recalled. She told him she was living between New York and Florida and that “she would never go back to Slovenia.”
He also commented on her marriage to Donald Trump, saying, “I think her marriage to Trump was fate. Nobody believed 20 years ago that she would live at the top of the world, on Fifth Avenue in Trump Tower – even her!”
The moment Donald Trump walked into Melania Trump’s life in 1998 was when she shifted from being an unknown model to a woman with all eyes on her.
Despite Trump being a well-known man at the time because of his business empire, Melania took all of the media interest thrown at her with cool composure. She even spoke positively about Trump not just as her boyfriend, but also as the future leader of America.
“He would be a great president,” she said in a 1999 interview with ABC News. “He’s very smart…He knows how to do a business. He would be a great leader.”
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