Before Melania Trump was the First Lady of the United States, she was a successful businesswoman and model. Nearly two decades ago, the drop-dead gorgeous Melania Trump appeared on the front of a “New York” magazine cover for a special Valentine’s Day edition. In the photo, she’s seen landing a big smooch on an actual NYC firefighter, who was also at the time, a part-time model.
Melania Trump is undoubtedly the most beautiful, and certainly one of the most brilliant first lady’s in the history of America, but don’t look for her on the cover of many magazines in the U.S. Unlike her predecessor, Michelle Obama, whose airbrushed image could be frequently seen on the cover of literally every fashion magazine, top fashion magazines have completely snubbed Melania Trump because they despise her husband, President Donald J. Trump’s politics.
New York Post – At the time of the photoshoot in 2002 — meant to be reminiscent of the iconic V-J Day smooch between a sailor and a nurse in 1945 — Trump was a little-known model named Melania Knauss who had been hired to pose on the cover of the publication’s Valentine’s Day ‘Singles’ issue, according to New York.
Knauss, who was at the time dating Donald Trump — then known as a Big Apple property developer — was selected to star on the cover paying homage to New York’s first responders who had become “rock stars” in the wake of the devastating 9/11 attacks months earlier.
“Recently, the journalist Matt Haber learned (via this Flickr post) something that we at New York had forgotten: The female model we’d hired was a pretty young Slovenian named Melania Knauss, who had been dating a New York real-estate developer on and off for several years, and married him a couple of years after that,” the new New York report describes.
“We did not, at the time, expect to be working with the future First Lady of the United States. But we were.”
Engine 7, Ladder 1 smoke eater Daniel T. Keane — who also moonlighted as a part-time model — recalled how he and Knauss re-created Alfred Eisenstaedt’s famous end-of-WWII photograph.
They held the pose “a couple hundred times” — Trump each time grabbing him and planting a big kiss on him, Keane, now an FDNY battalion chief, said.
