Melania Trump Sister Ines Knauss: Five Things You Need To Know
Melania Trump’s sister, Ines Knauss, has entered the public eye now that The New York Post has broken the news that the very private First Lady has a sister. But information about the reclusive First Sister has been hard to come b, as she prefers to stay behind the scenes and live a relatively quiet life, not unlike her better known younger sibling. Here are five things you need to know about Melania’s big sister.
She Lives Just Blocks From Melania, And Melania Considers Her A Trusted Advisor
As The New York Post reports, Ines, 50, lives in a $2 million Manhattan penthouse owned by the Trump organization, just a few blocks down the street from Melania’s apartment, where Melania and son Barron Trump are living (as opposed to the White House) while Barron finishes his school term.
Who is Melania Trump’s Older Sister? Inside The Life of The First Lady’s Confidante: Ines Knauss, who is rarely… https://t.co/FU6Yj990I6
— NNY News.ca (@NewsNearYouca) February 22, 2017
Mutual friend Audrey Gruss, a Palm Beach philanthropist who has crossed paths with the Trump family from time to time, has nothing but good things to say about Ines.
“They are very close. She struck me as a lovely person, and extremely creative.”
Like Her Little Sister, She Prefers To Remain Private
Unlike Melania, who married a powerful real-estate developer and TV personality and was thrust into the public eye, Ines is almost comparatively invisible. Prior to 2016, her name rarely came up in the media; in fact, the Post was only able to dig up one mention of her in print: a single blurb about her in the Palm Beach Post‘s society pages from 2005. There, a single photograph of her showed her beside her sister at Melania’s wedding to Donald at the post Mar-a-Lago Resort.
She’s An Artist And Fashion Designer
Ines and Melania were both born in what was, at the time, Communist Yugoslavia, but is now part of the independent nation of Slovenia. As Inside Edition reports, by the time the girls were teenagers, they moved to Slovenia’s capital city of Ljubljana to attend art school. After school, the young women went to Milan, Italy, to break into fashion.
Melania pursued the modeling angle and became known in the industry as a top model. Ines, on the other hand, pursued a more behind-the-scenes role in the fashion industry, in the areas of art and design.
Photographer Jarl Ale De Basseville, who met Ines in Milan, describes her as humble.
“She was really nice. She was really humble. She was simple.”
She Has A Public Facebook Page (For Now)
Unlike her Twitter account, which is set to private, Ines’ Facebook page is public (as of this writing). Her photos are a mix of her sketches, as well as old pictures of her and Melania as children.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1203136753061620&set=p.1203136753061620&type=3&permPage=1
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1090982594277037&set=p.1090982594277037&type=3&permPage=1
She’s Fiercely Protective Of Her Older Sister
While she went largely unnoticed here in the United States during her brother-in-law Donald’s campaign for President, back in Slovenia, Ines and Melania were often at the center of celebrity trash stories in the Slovene media.
In June 2016, Slovene tabloids were awash in stories from men claiming to be former boyfriends of Melania Trump, each promising to share juicy details. In a Facebook post, Ines cautioned those men against fabricating stories.
“We all have good memories & lies are not good karma.”
Similarly, according to CNN, when Melania appeared on the cover of Slovenian tabloid Suzy, Ines specifically called out, by name, a man she suspected of providing false stories about her sister.
“NE LAZI PETER [Do not lie, Peter].”
As of this writing, Melania Trump has not publicly discussed her sister.
[Featured Image by Alex Wong/Getty Images]
