Lloyd sat in her kitchen on hold for about six minutes, she told The Post and Courier. There was no hold music, just silence. She expected to hear a voice recording when it picked up, if anything. 

"He has a lot to do on the night of Christmas Eve," she said.

Then came the New York accent. 

Trump, who sat in the Oval Office in Washington, D.C., was suddenly on speaker phone in Lloyd's kitchen. 

"Are you still a believer in Santa?" he asked. 

"Yes, sir," she said. 

Then the president asked her a puzzling question: 

"Because at 7, that's marginal, right?" 

Lloyd had never heard that word before, "marginal." 

"Yes, sir," she said. 

She didn't know it, but his comment about her age being marginal -- and her response -- would spark national news stories that night and the following morning.

Lloyd never did learn Santa's whereabouts, but she was glad to be able to talk with her nation's leader. 

"I was like, 'wow.' I was shocked," she said. "It wasn't really (nerve-wracking), I just had to think of what the truth was."