In her memoirs published on Tuesday, October 8, the former first lady of the United States recalled the day when the future president flirted with her for the first time.

She literally stole the show. In his memoirs Melaniapublished on Tuesday October 8, Donald Trump’s wife looks back on her meeting with the future president of the United States, then on the arm of another woman. If we are to believe the former first lady, the businessman was at the time in the company of a “beautiful blonde” – entrepreneur Celina Midelfart – when they first crossed paths time, during a party organized during Fashion Week in 1998, in a nightclub called the Kit Kat Club. Variety thus revealed an extract from the work, in which the former model remembers her first flirtation with the real estate mogul.

A “moment of connection”

“Hello,” the latter would have said to him. I am Donald Trump. Delighted to meet you.” At the time, Melania Knauss was aware that her interlocutor was “a businessman or a celebrity”, but did not know “much more”. “He reached out to shake mine,” she continued. After the usual introductions, the two would have started a fascinating conversation. “His eyes were filled with curiosity and interest, and, seizing the opportunity, he sat down next to me and started a conversation,” she recalled. He asked me about my life in New York, my Slovenian home and my travels around the world.

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A discussion that remained engraved in his memory. “It was a moment of connection, a brief encounter that left a lasting impression on me,” she wrote. It was nice to meet someone new.” However, at the time, Melania Knauss did not expect anything from this conversation. The young woman is well aware that the businessman came accompanied to the event. She thus perceives this moment as “simple pleasantries exchanged during a fashion industry event”. “The music was loud and the environment was noisy, making it difficult to truly connect with someone,” she continued.

The “center of his world”

The model would nonetheless have been seduced by “the charm and relaxed nature” of Donald Trump. “There was a lot of excitement around us, but the care he took to focus on our discussion made me feel like I was the center of his world,” she explained. An exchange “a thousand miles from a simple superficial conversation”, which enchanted the future First Lady“attracted by the magnetic energy” of the businessman. “When his partner was gone for a moment, he asked me for my phone number,” she said. I politely declined his request. He was a little surprised.”

Melania nevertheless asked him for his number. “I’ll give you my number if you promise to call me,” Donald Trump reportedly replied. The businessman then allegedly called his bodyguard, who discreetly wrote the number on an elegant business card. “Donald took the card and handed it to me,” she said. The two would have seen each other again a week later. Then would have experienced a checkered relationship over the following years. In 2005, however, they said “yes” during a ceremony in Palm Beach. Before becoming one of the most powerful couples in the United States, a decade later.

“He was someone rare”

A meeting that Charlotte Hayes, columnist for the New York Observer and the Washington Timesmentions in the podcast Scandals of Madame Figaro. “Melania Knauss, her maiden name, was someone rare,” she analyzed. She was a supermodel homebody, she liked to stay in her apartment near Union Square in New York.” Before adding: “One day, someone convinced her to go to a party at the Kit Kat Club in New York. She met Donald Trump, and he was completely smitten, which was not mutual. He came with another woman and when he wanted to take her phone number, she didn’t give it to him.”

A meeting mocked by Melania Trump’s friends. Notably Matthew Atanian, a photographer who was his roommate at the time, and who remembered in Vanity Fair of what he had said to her at the time: “What you like are her little hands, her hairstyle and her dapper appearance, not her money of course…?” To which she allegedly replied: “Stop. He’s a man, a real one.” The love felt by Donald Trump towards Melania Knauss would also be sincere.

“What is very interesting is that at the time, once again, Donald Trump had the possibility of seducing a lot of women,” journalist Laurence Haïm explained to Madame Figaro. There were a lot of girls who wanted to date him and it was Melania Trump who, in a way, got him. They are very in love, it shows in the photos, it’s not a story at all (…) We see that there is really something between them. Decades later, the former first lady is still at her husband’s side during his new presidential campaign.