Melania and Me: The Rise and Fall of My Friendship with the First Lady

By Stephanie Winston Wolkoff

What Melania wants, Melania gets.

The former director of special events at Vogue and producer of nine legendary Met Galas, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff met Melania Knauss in 2003 and had a front row seat to the transformation of Donald Trump’s then girlfriend from a rough-cut gem to a precious diamond. As their friendship deepened over lunches at Manhattan hot spots, black-tie parties and giggle sessions in the penthouse at Trump Tower, Wolkoff watched the newest Mrs Trump raise her son, Barron, and manage her highly scrutinised marriage.

After Trump won the 2016 election, Wolkoff was recruited to help produce the 58th Presidential Inaugu­ration and to become the First Lady’s trusted advisor. Melania put Wolkoff in charge of hiring her staff, organising her events, helping her write speeches and creating her debut initiatives. Then it all fell apart when she was made the scapegoat for inauguration finance irregularities. Melania could have defended her innocent friend and confidant, but she stood by her man. The betrayal nearly destroyed Wolkoff.

In this candid and emotional memoir, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff takes you into Trump Tower and the White House to tell the funny, thrilling and heartbreaking story of her intimate friendship with one of the most famous women in the world, a woman few people truly understand. How did Melania react to the Access Hollywood tape and her husband’s affair with Stormy Daniels? Does she get along well with Ivanka? Why did she wear that jacket with 'I really don’t care, do u?' printed on the back? Is Melania happy being First Lady? And what really happened with the inauguration’s funding of $107 million? Wolkoff has some ideas...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
• Release date: Sep 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781398501225

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, former trusted advisor to First Lady Melania Trump, is the founder of SWW Creative, a consulting agency known for its work in event production, branding, and strategic partnerships. Wolkoff served as executive producer and chief creative officer of the 58th Presi­dential Inauguration and senior advisor to inauguration chairman Thomas J. Barrack, Jr. She was also the director of Special Events for Vogue; the founding fashion director for Lincoln Center, overseeing Mercedes-Benz Fash­ion Week; and a recipient of the 2011 Gordon Parks Foundation Award. Currently she’s vice chairperson for the Fed­eral Enforcement Homeland Security Foundation, advisor to Hopeland, and a board member of the UN Women for Peace Association, which is committed to the prevention of violence against women and girls. Through her association with the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, she is an advocate for integrating the teaching of social-emotional learning into our education systems nationally and worldwide. Wolkoff resides in New York with her family.

Reviews for Melania and Me

[clara53_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

What a bizarre tale of self-destruction... And for what? To be close to "royalty", or "to help" her "friend" Melania??? With absolutely no financial compensation? Are we to understand that a smart lady like the author, with impeccable event organizing credentials, is that naive?..."Our first full month in the White House was like living inside an emotional washing machine that only made you feel dirtier with every rinse." It says it all... Ms. Winston Wolkoff tries her best to justify her staying in that environment (things like "protecting" her "friend" Melania from the Trump family - especially from Ivanka - etc....), but Melania emerges in this account as a practical,  calculating person quite capable to protect herself, who knows exactly what she is in for,  and who has her priorities all figured out.It's not surprising to find the emerging Trump administration a total chaos. The surprise is how deceived Ms. Winston Wolkoff was in her emotions towards Melania, who values her luxuries more than anything and who would much rather spend time at a spa - at her own admission - according to the author, than go campaigning for her husband or attend some political function.In hindsight, the author herself doesn't feel that it was worth it, what with her huge health problem in the midst of it all, as well as her anguish about her son's extreme food allergies - all that had to be put aside for the sake of Trump inauguration and later - for the sake of making something great out of Melania... One can't help but doubt the naive nature that Stephanie W. W.  claims to have had through all of this...   The book left me with an unpleasant feeling.  In structure, it is a hectic, all-over-the-place narrative, too detailed, especially describing the author's great skills in arranging events (!), with the desire to prove her great self-worth, and also the depiction of constant scheming and suspicion and lack of trust among everybody around her... Why did she go on in an environment like that?...  A million dollar question. 

[flourgirl49 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The author of this book was naive enough to think that Melania Trump was her friend, instead finally coming to realize that she's just as cold and manipulative as the rest of the family she married into. Her extensive (much too long) descriptions of the planning and financial maneuvering that took place for Trump's inauguration show just how corrupt his administration and the people around him are. No surprise there - except for the author, apparently. She was really taken for a sucker, and I can't feel sorry for her.

[nyiper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm glad Wolkoff was able to write this book. What draws someone in to the "Trump family" to ever think they are going to do anything but accept and expect all you are willing to give them? It wasn't as though Wolkoff wasn't warned as she seemed to become deeper and deeper into believing she could actually accomplish "something" through what she finally realized, was a completely false picture of a "friend." She writes how so many people were telling her to "RUN" from the Trumps, but look what it took....fo make her finally realize what was happening to her and, sadly, to the country. It would be interesting to see how she kept so many details around everything that was happening---apart from the descriptive emails and texts back and forth. It has to have been an enormous relief to get this all out there, in the hope that people reading about her experiences can see how easy it is....to be so fooled by something that is only skin deep, if that. As she says, a Trump is a Trump is a Trump--they are all one and the same.