If Melania Trump succeeds Michelle Obama as First Lady, she may trace her road to the White House back to 1987 and a chance encounter in the capital of her native Slovenia.
“I was leaving a fashion show in Ljubljana and saw her in front of the building. She was probably waiting for
a friend,” said Slovenian photographer Stane Jerko. “She was tall and slim so she caught my eye and I approached her and suggested that she come in for a trial photo shoot.”
Jerko
says the resulting black-and-white pictures of the 17-year-old known
then as Melanija Knavs – round face, bare feet, hair in a ponytail –
launched a career that would take her to Milan and the United States, where she met Donald Trump at a party in New York in 1998.
Though
not quite a tale of rags to riches, the lifestyle she leads as the
third wife of the billionaire businessman is a far cry from her roots in
Slovenia, a tiny former Yugoslav republic of 2 million people
comparable in size to New Jersey and nestled below the Julian Alps
between Italy, Croatia, Austria and Hungary.
Residents
of the small town of Sevnica in southeastern Slovenia, where Melania
grew up on the banks of the River Sava, say her father sold car parts
and that her mother worked for a factory that made children’s clothing.
She was often seen sewing late into the evening at home. Some media
reports have said her father was a member of the then ruling Communist
Party, like many other people in socialist Yugoslavia, but Reuters could
not independently confirm this.
The Trump
campaign team offered Reuters a different account of her childhood and
career, saying Melania began modeling at the age of five, that her
mother was a fashion designer and her father a manager in a car company.
"Her father was never a member of the Communist Party,” a spokesperson said.
WISH TO SEE THE WORLD
Since
taking a gilded escalator with her husband at his Fifth Avenue Trump
Tower skyscraper in June last year when he announced his decision to run
for president, Melania has adopted a low profile in his campaign for
the Republican Party nomination. She does not appear at his rallies,
where Trump occasionally brings out his children instead, though he
rarely fails to mention her.
“When I saw whom she married I noticed a number of similarities between Donald Trump and Melanija’s father,” said Mirjana Jelancic, who said she was a childhood friend of Melania. “They
have similar features and behavior and are both hard workers. I think
she met a soul mate in him, someone she can feel safe with.”
The
Knavs family lived in an apartment block, moving when Melania was a
teenager to a modest two-storey house above the Sava on the outskirts of
Sevnica, where a well-maintained medieval castle sits on a hill
overlooking the town of some 4,500 people.
Melania’s
parents still live in the house, which has a small garden and a few
fruit trees, though they spent a lot of time in the United States, where
Melania’s sister Ines also lives. The house was empty when Reuters
reporters visited and repeated phone calls went unanswered.
Jelancic recalled Melania as a model student keen on the arts, geography and history.
“She loved reading. She always carried books with her,” said Jelancic. “I also remember she had wall bars at home and trained regularly to keep her body in shape.”
“Melanija liked beautiful clothes and knew how to wear them,” said Jelancic, now headmistress at Melania’s former elementary school.
“She
liked to give them a personal touch by redesigning them and was very
good at upgrading old things. It was clear she would work in fashion
though she never said that she wanted to be a model.”
“I
remember her telling me how she cannot wait to go to Ljubljana where
she attended a high school for design. She had a wish to see the world.”
DONATION
It
was in Ljubljana that she was discovered and began modeling full-time,
coming second place in a 1992 national beauty pageant the year after
Slovenia declared independence from Yugoslavia and fought a ten-day war
to strike out alone.
“She was shy at first but learnt quickly and showed great interest in every detail of the shoot,” said Jerko. “She was like a sleeping chrysalis that transformed into a glamorous butterfly,” he gushed.
The
future Mrs Trump did not look back, changing her name to the more
easily pronounceable Melania Knauss. No one in Sevnica spoken to by
Reuters recalled having seen her there in recent years. She did,
however, donate an ambulance to the local health clinic to celebrate the
birth of her son, Barron, in 2006, a year after marrying Trump, 24
years her senior.
Some speculated that the town
might receive another donation or more publicity if Trump wins the
presidency. Those Reuters spoke to would not be drawn on his politics,
which are stridently anti-immigration.
Jerko, a youthful 78 years-old with short gray hair and beard, still keeps a file with Melania’s pictures and measurements.
“I’m
sure she would be happy if her husband became U.S. president. I think
she is very proud of his achievements and I believe I had something to
do with where she is today.”
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