Donald Trump is many things — a twice-impeached former president, a crumbling businessman, and an American citizen currently standing criminal trial — but long before he added many of these items to his list, he was a husband.
Trump first became a husband in 1977 when he married the first of what would become three wives. He and Ivana Zelníčková, later Ivana Trump, were married for 13 years until, in 1990, Trump’s affair with actress Marla Maples was exposed. The pair, who share Trump’s three eldest children together, were divorced, and Trump went on to marry his former mistress.
He and Maples were together for nearly a decade themselves and share Trump’s fourth child — Tiffany — between them, but their marriage, too, was fated to end. They divorced in 1999 six years after Tiffany was born, which paved the way for Trump’s third — and perhaps final — marriage — this time to Melania Trump, the woman who would become First Lady of the United States.
When did Donald and Melania Trump get married?
Let’s just say Donald Trump has a type and exactly zero shame about sticking to it. He loves beautiful, thin, light-haired women and prefers them at least a good decade younger. His first wife is the only exception, but it took less than a decade and a half for Trump to wander toward more youthful pastures. He moved on to Maples, who was 17 years his junior, before shifting to an even larger age gap a decade and a half later. A full 24 years separate the former president from his current wife, who he met back when he and Maples were still a pair.
Melania and her eventual husband first crossed paths in 1998, a year before his divorce from Maples was finalized. Their relationship began a year later, in 1999, and — despite at least one breakup and plenty of hurdles — they made it official in 2005. After getting engaged in 2004, the pair was wed on Jan. 22, 2005 in a Palm Beach ceremony that later spilled over into Trump’s treasured Mar-a-Lago estate.
Just over a year later, the pair welcomed their son, and Trump’s fifth child, into the family. Barron Trump was born on March 20, 2006, just nine years ahead of his father announcing a run for president. Despite numerous issues and Melania’s rapid departure from the spotlight — and her husband’s side — in the aftermath of his presidency, no news has broken that they’re headed for a divorce.
Their marriage certainly seems to be on the rocks, but it seems — for now, at least — that the Trumps are content with how things stand. If the former president somehow pulls off the impossible and secures another term, we may see a shift in the former first lady’s attitude, but for now they’re perfectly content to stay married and live separate lives.