Melania is always Donald's first phone call, her former friend has claimed. Photo / Getty Images
Melania is always Donald's first phone call, her former friend has claimed. Photo / Getty Images
Many commentators have suggested the relationship between Melania and Donald Trump was frosty, but new details of calls between the couple have revealed a softer side.
A former friend and adviser of the former first lady, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, said Melania would be the first person to call Donald after every rally, and she would shower him with praise.
"I believe their way of showing affection towards one another is her telling him how wonderful and great he is," Winston Wolkoff said on the Hollywood Life podcast that aired this week.
"She was always his first phone call," she said of Trump's rallies and public appearances, "always, no matter where she was."
"And the first thing he'd say was: 'Hey Baby, how'd I do?'" the 51-year-old fashion executive said. "Like he wants her approval."
"She tells him how it is but she also makes sure to elevate him and embrace what he's doing, because that is who she is."
Winston Wolkoff said the frosty public displays from Melania were part of an act to distract the public from other issues.
Long before Donald Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden last December, rumours swirled over how long his third marriage would last when he eventually exited the White House.
Melania Trump was "counting down the minutes" until she could divorce her 74-year-old husband, according to former aides, "friends" and even Donald Trump's niece, while others declared the former model had "checked out", mentally and emotionally, from her role as First Lady and her "very strange marriage".
Melania's frosty public displays were an act to distract people from other issues during the presidency. Photo / AP
While Trump held on to power as his presidential term came to an end, fighting tooth and nail for weeks and claiming that election fraud was behind Joe Biden's stunning and historic election victory, the 50-year-old was focused on orchestrating a swift exit from Washington DC.
And yet, as they settle into life as (somewhat) private citizens at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, those in the couple's "inner orbit" insist that Melania Trump will be standing by her man, who she married 16 years ago in a splashy US$2.5 million wedding.
"The likelihood is 99.99 per cent they will stay together. I'd truly be shocked if Melania formally separated and divorced from her husband," a "friendly acquaintance" of the Trumps, society publicist R Couri Hay, told the Times.
"She grew up in a pseudo-communist difficult life. When she married, she wanted stability, romantic stability, financial stability, and through it all the one thing still standing is that marriage."
