Former first lady Melania Trump is nothing like the former FLOTUS women to occupy the White House. Born in a tiny town in Slovenia back when it belonged to Yugoslavia, this ex-model is the only FLOTUS who grew up in a Communist country. Her career over the decades has taken her from magazine spreads to mogul and reality TV show star (now, ex-POTUS can be added to his CV) Donald Trump.
She never wanted to seek a public life as notorious as the one she lives today, and while she’s defined in part by her husband’s success, she’s had her rebellious moments, like an anti-bullying campaign that made a statement against her hubby’s penchant for bullying on Twitter. Here are some other facts about this stoic and often silent woman who isn’t a PDA or fast fashion fan.
1. She’s close in age to her stepkids
Melania is the third wife of Donald Trump, having married him in 2005. When doing so, she became a stepmom to his four kids from pre-existing marriages. Her stepkids are quite close in age to her. She’s only seven years older than Donald Jr., and the jump in years between her and Eric, Tiffany, and Ivanka isn’t huge either.
2. She’s honest about her sex life with Donald
Donald Trump isn’t one to censor himself, as the “Access Hollywood” tapes prove. However, his wife is just as candid. In a 90s interview with Howard Stern, she admitted that she made love to her husband at least once a day and “sometimes even more.” Donald has also been open about how great his wife looked in a “very small thong.”
However, these days, the news goes that Melania and her hubby didn’t sleep in the same bed while they lived in the White House, and she even lived on a whole different floor.
3. She was the only foreign-born FLOTUS in nearly two centuries
Her nationality alone sets her apart. Born to an Austrian dad and Slovenian mom in Slovenia during the 70s, she’s one of the only first ladies born in a foreign country, including the wife of John Quincy Adams all the way back in 1825, who was born in England. Besides Slovenian, she speaks English, French, German, and Serbian.
4. The only first lady to pose nude
Despite shunning PDA, she once posed completely naked for a British GQ spread. She wasn’t bothered by the kitschy factor of the shoot, which involved Melania spread out nude on a fur rug, covered in diamonds, and handcuffed to a briefcase in a private plane. Melania has always been about luxury and scandal, and nothing proved it better than this shoot.
5. She promoted the birther conspiracy
According to a Washington Post reporter, Melania is a lot more like her husband than she wants people to think, and part of that is her support of fringe conspiracy theories. Donald always believed in the “birther” theory, a racist idea that Obama wasn’t born in the USA. Melania backed up her hubby, claiming on a reality show in 2011 that the live birth certificate wasn’t real and that said it was “different” from a birth certificate.
6. She has a long-standing beef with Ivanka
Despite being her stepmother, Melania Trump often clashes with Ivanka, and the two have never gotten along. Melania calls her “the Princess,” while Ivanka snarkily calls her “the Portrait” since her stepmom rarely speaks. Melania also supposedly wore a jacket that read “I really don’t care, do U?” As a dig at Ivanka, and their relationship has been described as “cordial, but not close.”
7. She’s had her own skincare and jewelry lines
Just like her husband, Melania is quite an entrepreneur. Her jewelry lines were sold on QVC back in 2010, and after their success, she came out with the Melania Caviar C6 line of lotions and creams. Using caviar from the South of France, the line is a blend of “proteins, collagen builders, oxygen boosters, and antioxidants that restore youth to the skin.” However, the line faced legal issues when the new Sunshine parent company (the firm she initially partnered with) sued her company.
8. She tried to get into NFTs
Although her foray into skincare didn’t go as well as she had hoped, her attempt to enter the NFT biz was an even bigger disaster. Towards the end of 2021, the former FLOTUS announced that she would launch her own non-fungible tokens. The first was called “Melania’s Vision,” and the proceeds would supposedly go to support the Be Best initiative. Then she announced another batch of NFTs, where buyers wouldn’t know what they’d bought until they actually purchased it. The sales of her first NFT collection didn’t go well.
9. She’s obsessed with her public image
While she tried very hard to convince the public that she didn’t care what others thought of her, Stephanie Grisham said that Melania was actually obsessed with her image, scrutinizing her press clippings with obsession over the details. She apparently had Google alerts set up and was equally obsessed with her appearance, assessing every photo taken of her and quashing those she wasn’t impressed by. Many agree that this superficial obsession came from her modeling days.
10. She stayed away when Donald was indicted
While many White House wives have stood by their husbands through all their trials and tribulations, Melania was absent when her husband appeared in an NYC courtroom and became the first president to be indicted and arrested on criminal charges. It was in relation to the Stormy Daniels case, which still makes Melania angry to this day. According to many, this silence was deliberate and a way of protecting herself.
