Everything to Know About Melania Trump's Sister, Ines Knauss
When her husband first took office in 2017, First Lady Melania Trump delayed her move to Washington DC and the White House, until the end of the school year. And while it was widely circulated that Trump was waiting until the end of her son Barron's school year, it was also thought that aside from her son, it was her elder sibling that also kept her in New York City.
Ines Knauss, pictured above left, is the first lady's very under-the-radar older sister. The 52-year-old lives in a Trump-owned apartment—in a building on the Upper East Side in which Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump also resided before they moved into their new house in Washington). Just a few short blocks away, four to be exact, is Trump Tower, where the first lady and Barron lived in a triplex penthouse.
But the siblings didn't just live by one another, it's been widely reported that they share a very close bond as well. Palm Beach philanthropist Audrey Gruss, above right, with Ines and Melania, told the New York Post the sisters "are very close." She met Ines at a fundraiser for the Boys' Club of New York at Mar-a-Lago in 2005. Ines, she says, struck her "as a lovely person, and extremely creative."
Indeed, the lesser-known Knauss seems to be an artist; and the First Lady has tweeted illustrations by her sister in the past.
art of gossip #courtesy of #artist ines knauss pic.twitter.com/SnsQIJ1bWC
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) August 6, 2014
But Ines has also posted flashback photographs of her famous sister, like these two from the early 1990s:
And this photo of Melania as a toddler, wishing her older sister a happy birthday:
Born born Melanija and Ines Knavs, the sisters are the only daughters of Viktor Knavs, a car salesman, and Amalija Ulčnik, and they grew up in the small Slovenian town of Sevnica, according to the Guardian. They reportedly have a half-brother, Denis Cigelnjak, who told GQ that he'd never met Viktor, the father he shares with Melania and Ines, or the half-sisters themselves.
During the early '90s Melania and Ines moved to Milan, where Melania worked as a fashion model, and Ines attempted to get her foot in the door in fashion design. Melania and Ines moved to Milan in the early '90s, where Melania worked as a fashion model and Ines attempted to get into fashion design.
"She really wanted to be in fashion but didn't know how to break in," Paris-based photographer Ale de Basseville told the Post . "Ines wasn't like the other girls you would meet there, who behave like queens. She was really polite and very mellow."
Other than this, not much is known about the First Lady's sister, and Melania Knauss' office has previously decline to discuss her with media outlets.
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