When a mysterious man sat down next to Melania Knauss at a star-filled New York Fashion Week party in 1998, she didn’t think much of it.
Not only, as a model, was she entirely used to male attention, but this man also seemed to be taken, having walked into the Kit Kat Klub with a beautiful blonde on his arm.
Melania, then 28, chatted politely with him nonetheless, telling him about her family back in Slovenia and how she had recently moved to America, while he leaned in and listened attentively.
Despite being ‘captivated by his charm’, she now says, and ‘drawn to his magnetic energy’, she wrote off the interaction as ‘mere pleasantries exchanged at an industry event’.
It was only when the man’s date left the table – and he boldly seized his opportunity to ask for her number – that Melania realized he had more than just friendly intentions.
When a mysterious man sat down next to Melania Knauss at a star-filled New York Fashion Week party in 1998, she didn’t think much of it.
Melania, then 28, chatted politely with him nonetheless, telling him about her family back in Slovenia and how she had recently moved to America, while he leaned in and listened.
Getting the measure of him immediately, she refused, telling him to give her his number instead.
Shocked and not used to rejection, he obliged, slipping her his business card before his date returned.
A few weeks later they went on their first date. A few years later, in 2005, they married – and Melania became the third Mrs Donald Trump.
These new details of the Trumps’ glitzy nightclub meeting are candidly revealed for the first time by the notoriously private former First Lady herself in an eye-opening memoir, Melania, published today.
The book offers the first real insight into Melania’s private life and her marriage – or, at the very least, it relays a narrative that she is happy for the world to read less than a month out from a presidential election that will decide if her husband once again gets the top job.
In the book, she is uncharacteristically gushing about a first date that she says left her ‘giddy with joy’ after finding an ‘instant connection’ with a ‘tender’ Donald, then aged 52.
Searching for a reason as to why Trump ditched his other date for her, Melania cattily suggests that he ‘saw me as more of a peer than the women he was used to spending time with.’
‘I think he appreciated that I had knowledge and experience under my belt,’ she snipes, ‘maybe he saw me as someone he could have more in-depth conversations with?’
A few weeks later they went on their first date and a few years later, in 2005, they married, and Melania became the third Mrs Donald Trump.
These new details of the Trumps’ glitzy nightclub meeting are candidly revealed for the first time by the notoriously private former First Lady herself in an eye-opening memoir, ‘Melania’.
In the book, she is uncharacteristically gushing about a first date that she says left her ‘giddy with joy’ after finding an ‘instant connection’ with a ‘tender’ Donald, then aged 52.
Certainly, Melania soon had Trump hooked and, in a particularly extraordinary revelation, she tells how her ‘caring’ husband calls her personal doctor ‘to this day’ to ask for updates on her health and ensure she is receiving the best care.
Melania had just returned from a trip to Paris on a Friday night in September 1998 when her friend rang to invite her out to an exclusive party being held the following evening.
She didn’t want to go, she was tired and jet lagged and – being something of a self-confessed introvert – would have far preferred to stay in and watch a film.
‘I have always been selective in how I choose to spend my time and where I put my energy,’ she writes. ‘Though I didn’t shy away from social gatherings, clubs were simply not my cup of tea.’
However, in the end, she found herself seduced by the ‘glamor and sophistication’ of a Fashion Week party filled with ‘industry insiders and trendsetters’. This is, after all, the type of adventure she’d left Slovenia to pursue.
Melania’s friend picked her up in a limo and whisked her away to New York’s famously debauched Kit Kat Klub, named after the 1930s Berlin nightclub in the musical Cabaret.
The club was an institution among the Manhattan set, frequented by celebrities, models and socialites and often host to exclusive performances from the biggest stars, including the likes of David Bowie.
Melania’s friend picked her up in a limo and whisked her away to NYC’s Kit Kat Klub, named after the 1930s Berlin nightclub in Cabaret (Alan Cumming pictured at Kit Kat Klub).
The club was an institution among the Manhattan set, frequented by celebrities, models and socialites (Lil Kim pictured at Kit Kat Club).
But, in 2000, it closed abruptly after a tumultuous few years rocked by a slew of noise complaints from neighbors and unsightly eruptions of violence.
Rapper Jay-Z pled guilty to stabbing a record promoter in the club in December 1999 and was sentenced to three years’ probation – though the victim went on the record last year and cleared Jay-Z’s name, saying he wasn’t in fact the perpetrator. And in March 2000, an off-duty correction officer and a visiting Atlanta police officer were both shot and wounded during a fight outside the club.
But in 1998, and when Melania pulled up in her limo, the Kit Kat Klub was still in its heyday.
‘As we arrived… the energy of the crowd and the dazzling lights greeted us,’ Melania writes, ‘inside, the dark, crowded space buzzed with models, photographers, editors and designers mingling.’
She had just found a table upstairs in the VIP section when her friend waved to someone behind her. Melania turned and saw a man she didn’t recognize walking towards them with ‘an attractive blonde woman’ – thought to be Trump’s then-girlfriend, Norwegian businesswoman Celina Midelfart.
Holding out his hand to Melania, he introduced himself: ‘Hi. I’m Donald Trump. Nice to meet you.’
Initially, Melania says she was unimpressed, recalling: ‘I knew he was a businessman or celebrity, but not much else.’
In 2000, Kit Kat Klub closed abruptly after a tumultuous few years rocked by a slew of noise complaints from neighbors and unsightly eruptions of violence (Diddy pictured at the club).
Holding out his hand to Melania, he introduced himself: ‘Hi. I’m Donald Trump. Nice to meet you.’
But as they got talking, she describes how a ‘moment of connection’ was borne – ‘a brief encounter that left a lasting impression.’
The day after their meeting, Melania says she played and replayed the encounter in her head, contemplating calling Trump as she packed for a work trip to the Caribbean where she was due for a photoshoot.
‘The thought of contacting him added a sense of anticipation to returning,’ she writes.
When she got back from the trip, she resolved to call, leaving a message on his answering machine.
He rang back that evening and asked with particularly Trumpian abruptness: ‘Why didn’t you call sooner? I was thinking about you.’
Even though they had met just once, Melania describes the bond between them as ‘palpable’ and they agreed to see each other soon.
The very next day in fact, Trump invited her to drive out of the city that weekend to see a sprawling property in Bedford, New York, set on 230 acres of land and which he was considering turning into a golf club.
He picked her up that Sunday from her Manhattan home in a black Mercedes and drove an hour and a half out of the city.
It was hardly a romantic first date in the traditional sense.
‘Looking back,’ Melania admits, ‘it was a very «Donald» kind of first date – a mix of business and pleasure.’
‘We walked through the rooms, him giving me a tour while also inspecting the place… to make sure everything was in good shape,’ Melania recalls.
The day after their meeting, Melania says she replayed the encounter in her head, contemplating ringing him as she packed for a work trip to the Caribbean for a photoshoot.
Even though they had met just once, Melania describes the bond between them as ‘palpable’ and they agreed to see each other soon.
And although readers may find it hard to imagine driving fifty miles to view a development project as anything other than terribly boring, Melania believed it to be perfect.
‘He was so easy to talk to and genuinely interested in everything,’ she writes.
At the time, Trump was still in the process of separating from his second wife, actress Marla Maples. But Melania was not put off when he opened up about his divorce and children, the eldest of whom is only eight years her junior.
‘I refrained from passing any judgment,’ she says simply, ‘choosing instead to enjoy his company’.
She had, she insists, discovered her match – a man who in private appears rather different from the Donald Trump the wider world has come to know: ‘He revealed himself as a gentleman, displaying tenderness and thoughtfulness.’
