Melania Trump (born Melanija Knavs on April 26, 1970, in Slovenia, Yugoslavia) is a Slovenian-American former model who is currently serving as the First Lady of the United States for a second time, having previously held the role from 2017 to 2021 as the wife of President Donald Trump. She is a historic figure as the first naturalized citizen and non-native English speaker to become First Lady, and only the second foreign-born, second Catholic, and second to serve nonconsecutively. After starting her modeling career at 16, she moved to New York in 1996, met Donald Trump in 1998, and married him in 2005, later giving birth to their son Barron. During the 2016 campaign, she made rare appearances but drew major headlines for a plagiarized convention speech and for defending her husband after the Access Hollywood tape. As First Lady, she launched the Be Best campaign for children's welfare, influenced the end of the family separation policy, and endorsed her husband's false claims of election fraud in 2020 before returning to the role in 2025.