Melania, who was moving around Europe following the jobs, said she got a visa to come to New York with the help of an Italian agent in Milan who was scouting models. That man was Paolo Zampolli, a wealthy Italian who became executive vice president of a model management office in New York. Zampolli and Melania were born a month apart in 1970, but they grew up very differently. His father owned Harbert, a toy manufacturing company that sold the Easy-Bake Oven, Star Wars figures, and many popular toys. He said he was distantly related to Pope Paul VI, grew up skiing in the Alps, and frequently yachted off the island of Ibiza, a playground for the rich. When Zampolli was eighteen, his father died in a skiing accident, and the family business was sold to a company controlled by Silvio Berlusconi, who would become Italy’s prime minister
Like other wealthy young men in Milan, Zampolli hung around the city’s vibrant modeling and party scene. He threw parties and met everybody, including John Casablancas, the legendary creator of many models’ images and careers. Zampolli, who dated several models, got into the modeling business himself and began scouting for women to bring to New York,. He said in an interview that when he met Melania, she was beautiful and, unlike many other models, she was “stable and focused.” His New York agency, Metropolitan, arranged her visa to the United States. Melania, tight-lipped about many things, has been particularly silent about whom she dated before she arrived in New York, but several men have publicly said that they dated her. As she was preparing to move to New York, people who knew her said that a Frenchman had called a few people, frantically trying to reach her, telling one that she had abruptly returned the car he had given her as a present. Her reason, it seems, was simple: she was moving on, heading to the city she had been reading about for years.
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