Donald and Melania Trump: the ins and outs of an unorthodox marriage
They are in love? Is it a marriage of convenience for both of you? Their relationship is an enigma.
When Melanija Knavs came to New York in 1996 to earn a living as a model, she had no idea that she would end up being the first lady of the United States. Two years after setting foot in the Big Apple, the Slovenian began her relationship with Donald Trump. They say that the crush at a party was instantaneous and it was common to see them doing all kinds of cuddles in public. Now she pushes his hand away whenever she can.
Melania Trump is a mystery even to her closest associates. Journalist Mary Jordan, who has worked for five years on her biography interviewing White House workers, tells in the book The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump that one of her sources describes her as "a ghost." . Her current relationship with her husband, rudeness aside, is also a mystery. They are in love? Is it a marriage of convenience for both of you? The only thing that is clear is that they are an unorthodox couple.
Jordan writes in her book that the couple sleep in separate rooms and that they spend a lot of time apart from each other even though they are in the same building. “She barely goes to the West Wing. She does not like golf. She has her own spa. She likes to be isolated. She is lonely. He is also lonely. They are perfectly happy to be apart ”, says the author.
Trump, in fact, was alone in the White House for the first few months of his presidency while his wife and his young son, Barron, stayed in New York. On whether Melania was desperate because her husband had won the elections there is division: there are those who say that she likes the position or, like Michael Wolff, who assures that the first lady burst into tears during the election night, and not precisely from joy.
This lack of affection has not always been common in the couple. In 1999 they grabbed all the headlines after an interview with Howard Stern in which they spoke openly about their sex life and Melania claimed that they had sex several times a day. At that time she was 29 and he was 53.
The Trumps were married in January 2005 at Mar-a-Lago, the president's luxury resort in Florida. They did it, how could it be otherwise, in a big way. For the extravagant wedding they placed 10,000 flowers and invited the best of the world of entertainment, from Heidi Klum and Diddy to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Melania wore a Christian Dior haute couture dress that cost more than 100,000 euros and took her to the cover of Vogue. The magazine now doesn't even want to hear about the first lady.
By then they were already showing off giving each other space. So much space that the supposed affair that Donald had with the porn actress Stormy Daniels was in 2006, when Melania was pregnant with Barron, the only child of the marriage. The scandal came to light in 2018 and apparently the ex-model's anger was such that she canceled all official travel plans that she shared with her husband.
He, of course, did not try to regain his wife's trust by being a detail-oriented man. For Melania's 48th birthday the president said that he had only given her flowers because he was too busy to waste time on it.
Since they arrived at the White House, the couple's body language has been analyzed to the millimeter, although sometimes you don't need to be an expert. Up to a dozen times Melania has let go of her husband's hand, and on occasion without cutting a hair and without any subtlety. The tension was also palpable when they visited a church in Washington to honor John Paul II and posed in front of photographers. The magnate insistently asked her wife to smile, and she was not seen because of her work, although in the end she outlined a small smile.
Patti Wood, an expert in non-verbal communication, explained last year that the couple has been increasingly uncomfortable and tense in the last four years, and that their body language conveys that "neither of them is happy."
Despite this, Mary Jordan assures in her book that the trust between them on a professional level is total. In the case of the president it is especially significant since he does not have a great circle of trust. “They have a very unusual relationship, but there is an important link: they have an agreement from the beginning. He loves himself, her work, has her own life, and spends a lot of time apart from her. And Melania is happy with the situation ”, says the journalist.
When Donald Trump took office, all the cameras were on Melania. Her headlines spoke of her husband's lack of tact towards her and of the faces and hieratic face of the first lady. If the Republican wins the election, the scene will be the same again. Even with some rudeness.
