Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer for Politico.

Bo Dietl went to Donald Trump’s third wedding in January 2005 in Palm Beach, Florida, he said the other day, because he’s good friends with Trump and the wedding was “the wedding of weddings” and anybody who got an invitation and didn’t go had to have been “on crack.” So there was the ex-New York City homicide detective and Fox News contributor, in the gardenias-scented Episcopal Church of Bethesda-by-the-Sea, when up walked Hillary Clinton.

“Hillary came running over,” Dietl said. “She was very nice. ‘Bo, how ya doin'?’ ‘Bo, I love you.’”


This, he thought, was strange, seeing as how they’re politically so at odds, a fact he has made public and plain. Voters now may feel a similar sense of befuddlement at the notion that Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were once friendly enough that she attended his joyful nuptials.

The wonkish Clinton is the front-runner for the Democrats. The bombastic Trump is the front-runner for the Republicans. What exactly was she doing at his wedding? Why did Trump invite Clinton, who at the time was the junior senator from New York, and why was she there, along with her plus-one, former President Bill Clinton, who didn’t attend the actual ceremony but did arrive for later portions of the opulent soiree?

“As a contributor,” Trump told POLITICO in a statement on Thursday, referring to checks he’s written to her campaigns as well as the Clintons’ foundation, “I demanded that they be there—they had no choice and that’s what’s wrong with our country. Our country is run by and for donors, special interests and lobbyists, and that is not a good formula for our country’s success. With me, there are no lobbyists and special interests. My only special interest is the United States of America.”

The Clinton campaign didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.

Her presence at the event, though, could bolster a cynic’s suspicions that today’s politics is a pay-to-play spectacle—less public service, more private riches—and that the Trumps and the Clintons have more in common with each other than they do with, say, Jim Webb or John Kasich.

On January 22, 2005, a year after the debut of Trump’s The Apprentice reality TV series, which made “You’re fired” a thing people say, and at the approximate apex of Florida’s last Ponzi-scheme housing boom, camera crews from celebrity gossip shows and news helicopters gawked as scores of limos pulled up under a setting sun.

The common denominator of the A-list guest list: people who had become “personalities.”

The coin of the realm: time on a screen.

Oprah Winfrey. Katie Couric. Derek Jeter. Barbara Walters. Russell Simmons. Star Jones. Anna Wintour. Simon Cowell. Don King. Kelly Ripa. Chris Matthews. Sylvester Stallone. Stone Phillips. Shaquille O’Neal. Four hundred some-odd somebodies in a church to see Trump.

Clinton sat in the front row of the pews.

“I think it was a respect thing,” Dietl said. “If I was a U.S. senator, I would’ve been seated in the front.” Instead, he was seated in the third row, he said, behind O’Neal, the basketball behemoth. “I couldn’t see much,” he said.

Trump, then 58, wed Slovenian model Melania Knauss, then 34, in a ceremony that lasted about half an hour. He wore a black Brioni tuxedo. She wore a $200,000 Christian Dior dress, replete with 300 feet of satin, 1,500 crystals and pearls and a 13-foot, 50-pound train. The strapless gown reportedly took 1,000 hours to make.

Joyce McLendon, the wife of a Palm Beach town councilman, recently called the wedding “lovely” and “simple.” After the ceremony, McLendon took an opportunity, she said, to talk to Clinton. Her daughter had been a student at Wellesley College at the same time as Clinton, nee Rodham, and “she was still sitting there, alone,” McLendon said. “She was obviously waiting until the press went away. We chatted awhile.”

Clinton wasn’t the only politician on hand. Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, was there. Al D’Amato, the former New York senator, was there. Through an aide, D’Amato, who’s 77 now, recently said the wedding was “great” but doesn’t remember much other than that. Clinton wasn’t even the only future 2016 presidential candidate there. George Pataki, at the time the governor of New York, happily accepted the invitation to the Trump nuptials on account of Trump’s previous financial support and their generally amicable relationship.

The reception and after-party at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago manse featured song and dance facilitated by Tony Bennett and Billy Joel; lobster, caviar and filet mignon; and a 5-foot-tall wedding cake covered with buttercream frosting and 3,000 roses made of white icing, according to New York City tabloids, Florida local papers and People magazine. The total bill for the festivities reached an estimated $1 million.

Dozens of the “personalities” or their intermediaries did not return calls and emails asking for their recollections of the event.

“Anna forwarded me your request,” Hildy Kuryk, the publicist of Wintour, the editor of Vogue, said in an email. “Unfortunately, at this time we are going to decline comment.” She wished this reporter “best of luck with the story.”

Back in 2005, though, some were a spot more chatty.

Billy Joel called it “beautiful.”

Don King called it “marvelous.”

Trump’s bride looked “ethereal,” Palm Beach socialite Andrea Stark told the Palm Beach Post.

The Cristal “flowed like water,” Preston Bailey, the wedding planner, told the New York Daily News.

The following Thursday, on NBC's Today show, Katie Couric and Matt Lauer had on the newlyweds.

“Matt and I were lucky enough to be among the invited guests, and we were very flattered by that,” Couric told viewers, before shifting to Trump and his wife, who told Couric and Lauer they were doing “really well,” “really well.”

“Well,” Couric said, “we’re so happy for both of you. I know the third time’s the charm. And we wish you the very best and much happiness for many years to come.”

They all thanked each other. Trump reminded everybody to watch that night’s episode of The Apprentice.