How did Melania and Donald Trump first meet?
Executive summary
Donald Trump and Melania (then Melania Knauss) first crossed paths in New York City in September 1998 at a Fashion Week party hosted by modeling agent Paolo Zampolli — the event has been identified as taking place at the Kit Kat Club during New York Fashion Week [1] [2]. Contemporary and later accounts agree Trump was attending with another date, that he introduced himself to Melania, and that their acquaintance quickly turned into a courtship leading to marriage in 2005 [1] [3].
1. The scene: a New York Fashion Week party where worlds collided
Multiple outlets trace the meeting to a Paolo Zampolli-hosted party during New York Fashion Week in September 1998 — reports commonly name the Kit Kat Club as the venue and place both Melania, a Slovenian-born model who had moved to the U.S. in 1996, and Donald Trump at the same table or room that night [1] [2] [4]. Sources note Melania was working in modeling in Manhattan after being sponsored to immigrate by Zampolli, situating her firmly inside the social circle that produced the encounter [5].
2. The first exchange: “Hi, I’m Donald Trump” and a swapped number
Accounts that draw on Melania’s own retelling and contemporaneous reporting describe Trump approaching Melania and saying “Hi, I’m Donald Trump,” which Melania later recounted recognizing as a businessman or celebrity but not knowing much more about him then [3] [6]. Several outlets report an awkward phone-number moment: Trump asked for her number while he was on a date, Melania instead asked for his number and tested him by seeing which numbers he gave — a detail repeated in coverage of the couple’s early courtship [7] [8].
3. From meeting to marriage: a rapid public progression
After that initial encounter, reporting indicates the two began seeing each other and moved into a public relationship; Trump’s divorce from Marla Maples finalized shortly after the pair first crossed paths, and the couple married in 2005, later welcoming their son Barron in 2006 — the arc from first meeting to marriage is well documented in timelines produced by mainstream outlets [2] [4] [3].
4. Melania’s memoir and retrospective affirmations
Melania has reiterated the Kit Kat Club/New York Fashion Week origin story in interviews and excerpts from her memoir, including a passage she shared titled “Hi, I’m Donald Trump,” in which she describes recognizing his name and his “magnetic energy” that made her feel like the center of his world — these firsthand accounts reinforce the party origin and the dialogue about how he approached her [6] [3].
5. Contradictory threads and questions raised later
Not all narratives have remained uncontested: later reporting and commentary have introduced alternative or more sensational claims linking other social circles and individuals — notably pieces that revisit Jeffrey Epstein’s connections to Trump and sometimes imply different versions of the early story — and those claims have prompted pushback from Trump allies and been characterized by some outlets as contested or unproven [9]. Where sources diverge, mainstream timelines and Melania’s own memoir consistently point to the 1998 Fashion Week party as the initial meeting [1] [2] [3].
6. What is reliably known — and what remains in partial view
Reliable, repeated elements across the reporting are that the encounter happened in September 1998 at a New York Fashion Week event hosted by Paolo Zampolli, that Melania was a model newly based in New York, that Trump approached her while he was with another date, and that the two quickly entered a relationship that culminated in marriage [1] [2] [5]. Beyond those core facts, more lurid or alternative versions exist in secondary reporting and commentary but are disputed or unverified in the sources provided, and the material here does not establish those accounts as factual [9].