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5 Things to Know About Melania Trump

Posted at 6:09 PM, Jul 18, 2016
and last updated 2016-07-18 18:21:57-04

Donald Trump has been known for speaking his mind on the campaign trail -- sometimes to his detriment -- but his wife doesn’t take such risks.

Melania Trump has made infrequent campaign appearances, and although she has given a few interviews, her highest-profile appearance will come this evening when she addresses the Republican National Convention.

Here are a few fast facts to know about the possible first lady.

She Was Born Abroad

Melania, 46, was born in Slovenia in 1970, but didn’t stay there past her teenage years.

She moved to Italy after signing with a modeling agency in Milan when she was just a teen and then eventually moved to the United States to work in New York.

She became a permanent resident in 2001 and a citizen in 2006.

If she were to become first lady, she would be the first presidential spouse born outside the United States since Louisa Adams, the wife of the sixth U.S. president, John Quincy Adams, who held office from 1825 to 1829.

Like Her Husband, She Has had Multiple Business Ventures

After starting her business career in modeling, she expanded into different areas of the fashion world and currently sells a line of jewelry and watches on QVC.

Since launching “Melania Timepieces and Fashion” in 2010, she expanded it to include a skin care line in 2013 that her website says is made entirely of “caviar imported from a cultured sturgeon farm in the South of France.”

She's Friendly With Another Big Speaker Tonight

Melania Knauss became Melania Trump when the couple married in 2005 in Trump’s historic Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Several hundred of their closest friends and family attended the affair, and while a photo from the wedding of the Trumps smiling with Bill and Hillary Clinton has made the rounds during the campaign, the former Democratic president and his wife were not the only politicians there for the Trumps' big day.

Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, was also in attendance at the nuptials, and his relationship with the Trumps is clearly still going strong. Giuliani is slated to address the convention ahead of Melania Trump tonight.

She Speaks Four Languages

Though her husband has said that in the United States, people “should be speaking English,” Melania speaks multiple languages.

As a result of her international upbringing and modeling work, she speaks English, French, Serbian and German.

She Has a Vision For Her Would-Be Role

If Trump does win in November, the former model has an idea in mind about what kind of first lady she would be.

She told The New York Times in 1999, ahead of one of her husband’s previous flirtations with the presidency, that she would be a “very traditional” wife if she were to move into the White House.

“Like Betty Ford or Jackie Kennedy, I would support him,” she said.