When did Donald Trump and Melania Knauss get engaged and married (dates in 2004)?
Executive summary
Donald Trump proposed to Melania Knauss on April 26, 2004 — her 34th birthday — as they were leaving the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Met Gala, according to contemporary biographies and widely cited summaries [1]. The couple did not marry in 2004; their wedding took place months later on January 22, 2005, in Palm Beach, Florida, with the ceremony at Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church and a reception at Mar-a-Lago reported across multiple outlets [2] [3].
1. The proposal: a date, a gala, and the anecdote reporters repeat
The engagement date most frequently reported is April 26, 2004, which several mainstream summaries and Melania’s own biographies mark as the day Donald Trump proposed to Melania Knauss — coinciding with her birthday and their departure for the Met Gala, a detail that has become part of the standard origin story repeated by encyclopedias and news timelines [1]. This account appears in widely consulted reference entries and profile timelines that stitch together public appearances — the Met Gala moment is cited to explain both timing and theater: a private proposal amid a high-profile evening [1] [4].
2. The wedding: not in 2004, but early 2005 at Mar-a‑Lago and Bethesda-by-the-Sea
Contrary to any suggestion that the couple married in 2004, reliable contemporaneous reporting and later retrospectives place the wedding on January 22, 2005, in Palm Beach, Florida, with ceremony coverage and guest lists printed in national outlets [2] [3]. Business Insider, Palm Beach Post and other outlets chronicle the January 22, 2005 date, describe the religious service at the Bethesda-by-the-Sea Episcopal Church and the reception at Trump’s Mar‑a‑Lago estate, and note fashion details and notable attendees that anchored the event in the society pages [2] [3].
3. Why the 2004 engagement and 2005 wedding narrative stuck
The two-step timeline — engagement in 2004 followed by a January 2005 wedding — has proven durable because it aligns with visible public markers: the Met Gala engagement story provides a vivid instantaneous moment, while the Mar‑a‑Lago wedding was a large socially reported event that naturally received its own separate press cycle [1] [2]. Media timelines and retrospectives typically compress long relationships into memorable dates, which helps explain why many sources emphasize the 2004 proposal as the key turning point while noting the subsequent 2005 nuptials in the context of anniversary coverage [5] [6].
4. Cross-checking sources and noting consistency
Multiple independent outlets corroborate the engagement-on-April-26-2004 claim and the January‑22‑2005 wedding date: encyclopedia entries and profiles cite the proposal date [1], while news magazines and news organizations chronicle the January 22, 2005 ceremony [2] [3]. Where discrepancies occasionally appear in casual summaries, they tend not to dispute those two anchor dates but rather vary in emphasis or in peripheral details like ring size, guest lists or gown designer, which are not central to the core timeline [7] [2].
5. Limitations and alternative framings in coverage
Reporting reviewed does not record any alternative, credible dates for the engagement other than April 26, 2004, nor for the wedding other than January 22, 2005, but the public narrative sometimes collapses the two events into a single “2004–2005” chapter, which can mislead readers who assume both occurred in the same calendar year [1] [2]. If further documentary confirmation is required — for instance, primary-source statements from the couple’s contemporaneous announcements or wedding program scans — the sources provided do not include those primary documents and thus the summary relies on secondary reporting [1] [2].