President Donald Trump’s only living sibling made a rare appearance on Wednesday at a suck-up ceremony to rename a Tennessee bridge after her brother.
Elizabeth Trump Grau, 84, was joined by the equally quiet Ann Marie Pallan, who is the widow of Trump’s late brother, Robert Trump, at an event in Dandridge, Tennessee, where they celebrated the official renaming of the “President Donald J. Trump Bridge” along Interstate 40.
The reclusive relatives posed for a photo with Republican figures, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and Reps. Tim Burchett and Jeremy Faison. Bessent shared the photo on X and hinted that other Trump family members were also in attendance.
Records show that Marie Pallan, 61, lives near a lake in Dandridge, which sits 35 miles east of Knoxville at the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Marie Pallan married Trump’s younger brother, Robert, in January 2020—eight months before he died at 71. Trump said his brother was his “best friend” in a statement after his death, and he held a funeral for him in the White House’s East Room.
Little has been said about Pallan, who was previously Robert’s secretary, since his funeral. Robert and Marie were rumored to be having an affair while he was married to his first wife, Blaine. Records show Pallan was a registered Republican when she lived in New York.
Elizabeth, who has outlived the president’s other three siblings, is a retired banking executive who keeps a lower profile than most in the Trump family. She rarely speaks about her brother’s political career, ducking questions from reporters as far back as his 2016 campaign.
The president wrongly believed his quietest sibling had joined social media to shower him in praise in 2020, resharing an article posted on the right-wing website waynedupree.com that claimed Elizabeth was now vocally backing her brother on Twitter. However, a Vice reporter called Elizabeth and confirmed that the blog and the president had been duped by a parody account.
“I’m trying to delete it,” she told VICE of the parody posts. “I don’t even belong to Twitter.”
She added, “I have no statement. I’m just annoyed about this whole thing.”
Michael Cohen, who was the president’s former attorney and longtime fixer, told Vice at the time that Trump and Elizabeth were not particularly close.
Trump had two other siblings who have since died: Maryanne Trump Barry and Fred Trump Jr.
Maryanne, the eldest of the Trump siblings, died in 2023 at age 86. Though an official cause of death was never released, a 911 call revealed that first responders were called to her Manhattan apartment to treat a woman in cardiac arrest.
Fred, who struggled with alcoholism, died from a heart attack in 1981 at age 42. He is the father of Mary Trump, who has been the loudest critic of the president within his own family.
