Before New York, her life included relationships in Slovenia. Peter Butoln has claimed to be her teenage boyfriend when she moved to Ljubljana, though later statements downplayed the seriousness of that connection. Another former partner, Jure Zorčič, recalls meeting her in 1991 and sharing a months-long romance that ended when she left for modeling work in Milan and Paris. Years later, they briefly crossed paths again in New York, where she told him she would not be returning home.

By the time Melania married Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2005, their courtship was public. Years earlier, she had already expressed confidence in his ambitions, once saying he would make “a great president.” Her journey from Slovenia to the global stage was not sudden but deliberate—carefully managed, selectively revealed, and always on her own terms.