The 53-year-old wife of former President Donald Trump wrote on the platform X, formerly Twitter, that she announced the death of her beloved mother “with deep sadness.” The exact age or cause of death were not mentioned in the post.
Born in Austria
According to historian Igor Omerza, Amalija Knavs was born in 1945 in Austria, near Graz, as the eighth child of a Slovenian refugee family. The father was a shoemaker, the mother was a housewife and seamstress. After the war ended, the family returned home. There Amalija met her future husband Viktor Knavs, who was a chauffeur at the time and later became a car salesman. The couple married in 1967 and had two daughters, Ines and Melania.
Bild: APA/AFP/ERIC BARADAT
The Knavs family was considered wealthy in Yugoslavia in those years. Amalija was therefore an elegant lady; she also made clothes for her daughters. Melania Trump’s parents supported her modeling career.
According to Omerza, many details regarding the family are difficult to learn because of their discretion. It is also unclear when Amalija and Viktor Knavs moved to the USA, as they were occasionally seen in Slovenia. The couple, who received US citizenship in 2018, accompanied Melania Trump during her time in the White House (2017-2021), most recently living at Trump’s private estate Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
