Trump Marries Melania Knauss

The Wedding

On January 22, 2005, Donald Trump, then 58, married Melania Knauss, 34, at the Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea in Palm Beach, Florida. The ceremony was followed by a reception at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, which was decorated with an estimated 10,000 flowers for the occasion.

It was Trump’s third marriage, following his divorces from Ivana Trump in 1992 and Marla Maples in 1999. The couple had been together since meeting at a party during Fashion Week in New York in 1998, where Trump, attending with a date, asked for Knauss’s phone number.

A Celebrity Spectacle

The guest list reflected the couple’s position at the intersection of New York society, entertainment, and politics. Among the approximately 350 guests were Bill and Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani, Barbara Walters, Billy Joel, Shaquille O’Neal, Simon Cowell, and Kelly Ripa. The Clintons’ attendance would later become a point of discussion during the 2016 presidential campaign, when Trump and Hillary Clinton faced each other as opponents.

Melania wore a custom Christian Dior gown designed by John Galliano, reportedly valued at over $100,000 and featuring 1,500 crystals and pearls. The wedding cake was a five-foot-tall, seven-tier Grand Marnier creation weighing approximately 200 pounds. The event was extensively covered by media, with People magazine reportedly paying for exclusive photo access.

The Third Mrs. Trump

The marriage made Melania Knauss the third woman to take the Trump name. Born in Novo Mesto in what was then Yugoslavia, she had worked as a model in Europe before moving to New York in 1996. The couple’s son, Barron William Trump, was born in March 2006, about fourteen months after the wedding.

Melania Trump would go on to become First Lady of the United States in January 2017, a role she occupied with a notably private and reserved public presence that contrasted sharply with her husband’s. Her journey from a small Slovenian town to the White House became one of the more unusual biographical arcs in American political history.