Who Is Eric Trump's Wife? All About RNC Co-Chair Lara Trump

Eric Trump's wife Lara Trump is at the forefront of Donald Trump's reelection campaign

Eric Trump's wife Lara Trump has taken on an official role in the GOP.

After being endorsed for co-chair of the Republican National Committee by her father-in-law, Donald Trump, in February 2024, Lara was formally elected to the GOP's No. 2 position in March, now serving beneath new Chair Michael Whatley, also a Trump ally.

However, this isn't the first time Lara has stepped up politically for the former president, who's currently running for reelection, as she previously served as a campaign adviser for him in his 2016 and 2020 presidential runs. Donald is widely expected to be the GOP's official nominee for president at the party's convention in July.

Lara has been a part of the Trump family since marrying Eric, Donald's second son, in 2014. The couple met six years earlier through mutual friends and have since welcomed two children, son Eric "Luke" Jr. and daughter Carolina Dorothy.

Related: RNC to Oust More than 60 Staffers After Trump Takeover, Ensuring All Are ‘Aligned’ with His Vision

So who is Lara Trump? Here’s everything to know about the new RNC co-chair and her relationship with husband Eric Trump.

She didn't know Eric's last name when they met

Lara was born Lara Lea Yunaska on Oct. 12, 1982, in Wilmington, North Carolina, and raised in the nearby town of Wrightsville Beach. Lara and Eric met in 2008 through mutual friends and began dating a few months later. When they first met, Lara said, she had no idea what his background was — at 5'11" to his 6'5", she was simply impressed with his height.

"When I first met Eric, I did not know who his dad was," she recalled on her podcast The Right View. "I didn't know his last name initially. I just knew I met some really tall guy out." She added that whenever she'd see Eric out, she was just impressed that he was taller than she was in heels.

She married Eric in 2014

Eric and Lara got engaged in July 2013 and married on Nov. 8, 2014, at his father's Mar-a-Lago Country Club in Palm Beach, Florida, the same place Donald and Melania Trump wed in 2005.

Lara wore a Vera Wang ball gown for the ceremony and a drop-waist corset gown for the reception and accessorized with diamond earrings from the Ivanka Trump Collection. Two weeks before the big day, she had a horseback riding accident and broke both of her wrists, but it didn't cramp her bridal style.

"I had to get creative with a way to make casts look bridal," Lara told PEOPLE. "Fortunately, my wedding planner, Jennifer Zabinski, and my designer, Preston Bailey, came up with some fabulously bedazzled gloves to try and blend these casts."

She's had a lot of career changes

After high school, Lara studied communications at North Carolina State University and graduated with honors. She later graduated from the French Culinary Institute in New York and became a pastry chef and a personal trainer.

Lara was a producer for the TV news program Inside Edition when she and Eric first met, but stepped away from the role to focus on being an adviser for her father-in-law's 2016 presidential campaign.

"I wasn't going to have the time to adequately dedicate to this," she told Port City Daily at the time. "When they're reporting on your family on the show you work for, it's a little challenging. We managed to keep everything pretty even-keeled for the duration of this whole thing, but certainly it's nice to not have to worry about that from day to day."

Lara served on the board of the Eric Trump Foundation until it reportedly stopped actively fundraising in 2017. The same year, she was hired as a consultant and adviser for Donald's re-election campaign and launched her "Real News" Facebook show, which reported on Donald's presidency.

In March 2021, Lara joined Fox News as a paid contributor. She parted ways with the network in December 2022 after Donald announced his reelection campaign for 2024.

Today, Lara hosts the podcast The Right View and still serves as an adviser to Donald.

They have two kids

Eric and Lara welcomed their first child, son Eric "Luke" Trump, Jr., on Sept. 12, 2017. Their daughter, Carolina Dorothy Trump, was born nearly two years later on Aug. 20, 2019.

In an interview with The Conservateur, she said that balancing work and motherhood wasn't always easy, but that it felt empowering for her.

"I never imagined that the old me before kids would feel as empowered in womanhood as a mom. It is the ultimate feminist move to grow a human inside your body, push them out, and nurture them," she said. "You are the reason the world continues to function. I felt so much power, like, 'Wow, this is really incredible that I did this.' "

Related: Donald Trump’s Family Tree: All About His Parents, Siblings, Wives and Children

They're raising their kids in New York

Lara and Eric live in Westchester, New York, about a 45-minute drive north of New York City. It's also where Eric proposed to Lara in 2013. They initially lived on the grounds of Donald's 230-acre Seven Springs estate, where Eric spent weekends and summers growing up, before moving to their own property near the Trump National Golf Club in Briarcliff Manor, New York.

"Eric said that I had to come up to Westchester with him, but I was so new to New York, I didn't know what it was all about," Lara told Westchester Magazine in 2018. "I quickly realized, though, how important the place was to him, and it's the greatest thing for me, too."

She considered running for office

Lara floated the idea of running for the North Carolina Senate seat in March 2021 when sitting Republican Sen. Richard Burr announced his retirement ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. Lara had the endorsement of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who called her "the future of the Republican party," but by that June, she ruled it out for the time being.

"Now you may have heard a rumor that I have been considering possibly running for a Senate seat here in North Carolina. I have been considering it and it's a big decision," she said at the North Carolina Republican state convention. "I did a lot of soul-searching, a lot of thinking, talking with my father-in law, my parents, my husband Eric."

Lara explained that she wouldn't be able to "give 100%" to the job because of her focus on her and Eric's young children — but that she wouldn't close the door on the opportunity permanently.

"It is going to be very hard for me to enter this Senate race right now," she said. "I am saying no for now, not no forever."

She became co-chair of the Republican National Committee in 2024

In February 2024, Donald endorsed Lara as the new co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

"My very talented daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, has agreed to run as the RNC Co-Chair," the former president said in a statement on Feb. 12, 2024. "Lara is an extremely talented communicator and is dedicated to all that MAGA stands for. She has told me she wants to accept this challenge and would be GREAT!"

According to Reuters, Lara told the RNC that they needed to fundraise "about half a billion dollars" before the presidential election in November. She didn't rule out potentially using some of their funding to pay for Donald's legal fees, which include a $355 million penalty from his civil fraud trial in New York and more than $83 million in damages to E. Jean Carroll for defamation (on top of the $5 million he was ordered to pay Carroll for being found civilly liable for sexual abuse and defamation in 2019).

"I think that is a big interest to people. Absolutely," she said. "[Republican donors] feel like it's an attack not just on Donald Trump but on this country."

Lara was officially elected as co-chair by the committee on March 8. The committee also unanimously voted Michael Whatley, the former North Carolina GOP Chair who denied the results of the 2020 election, as chair of the Republican National Committee. Ronna McDaniel, who was named RNC Chair in 2017, announced her resignation from the role less than two weeks prior.

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