On July 14, 2022, Ivana Trump passed away at the age of 73. She was perhaps best known for being Donald Trump’s first wife and the mother to his most prominent children: Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. Before she and Donald divorced, Ivana helped him build some of his most famous structures, including Trump Tower.
Her death was announced by none-other than her famous ex-husband Donald Trump on his social media platform Truth Social.
“I am very saddened to inform all of those that loved her, of which there are many, that Ivana Trump has passed away at her home in New York City,” he wrote. “She was a wonderful, beautiful, and amazing woman, who led a great and inspirational life. Her pride and joy were her three children, Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. She was so proud of them, as we were all so proud of her. Rest In Peace, Ivana!”
However, despite her inextricable link to her former husband, it’s important to separate Ivana Trump from Donald Trump, especially because she was an impressive and complex person in her own right. Who was Ivana, really? Let’s take a closer look at her life.
Ivana was an athlete and an actor
For many years, Ivana Trump effectively lived in the shadow of her famous husband, Donald. But even before they met, she lived one hell of a life as both an athlete and an actor!
According to a 1989 write-up in Spy Magazine, Ivana had actually performed in four different movies in her native Czechoslovakia by the time she was 12 years old. This was also around the time that she became a competitive skier, eventually falling in love with a skier named George Syrovatka. Their relationship took her to Prague, and she earned a degree in physical education there from Charles University.
It wasn’t long before she got married. However, both who she married and why she married are likely to surprise you!
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Ivana had a ‘Cold War’ first marriage
Donald Trump was not Ivana’s first husband. Back in 1971, Ivana married a skier named Alfred Winklmayr. By 1973, the New York Post reports that the two had split up.
Why was the marriage so short-lived? According to Reuters, this was a “Cold War marriage” whose goal was to help Ivana get an Austrian passport. With this, she was able to escape Communist Czechoslovakia. She was a model by now, and easy access to Western countries helped her modeling career take off.
That career also helped her meet the man who would ultimately change the course of her entire life.
How Ivana met Donald Trump
Ivana was a successful model in 1976. That year, she ended up doing some PR work for the Olympic Summer Games. She had a chance run-in with Donald Trump where he ended up both charming and surprising her.
Ivana dished about their first meeting with the New York Post. “[There’s] this tall blond guy with blue eyes. He said, ‘I’m Donald Trump and I see you’re looking for a table. I can help you.’ I look at my friends and said, ‘The good news is, we’re going to get a table real fast. The bad news is, this guy is going to be sitting with us.'”
She was expecting Donald to make a more overt move after that, but he quietly paid the bill and disappeared. This amused her, and she made the following observation to her fellow models: “I said, ‘There’s something strange because I’ve never met a man who didn’t want anything from a woman and paid for it.’
Donald hadn’t gone too far, though. When they exited the restaurant, Ivana and friends found Trump in the driver’s seat of his limousine. He offered to give everyone a ride home, and they accepted. After that, he and a very smitten Ivana began to date.
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Marrying and divorcing Donald Trump
From there, things moved very quickly for Donald and Ivana. The two were married the very next year, and their wild lives and lifestyles fueled countless gossip columns. They ended up having three children together, and Donald went so far as to trust Ivana with being the president of his Castle casino in Atlantic City and later managing his Plaza Hotel.
However, this was the beginning of the end of their relationship. In Trump’s famous (and infamously ghostwritten) book The Art of the Deal, Washington Post reports that Trump wrote, “My big mistake with Ivana was taking her out of the role of wife and allowing her to run one of my casinos in Atlantic City, then the Plaza Hotel.” By 1990, the two were getting divorced, and the salt in the wound was the persistent rumors that Trump cheating on Ivana with 26-year-old model (and future wife) Marla Maples was what finally drove them apart.
All things considered, Ivana did very well in the divorce. The New York Times reports she reached a settlement in 1991 that involved getting $14 million from Donald Trump, custody of the three kids, and $650,000 in alimony each year. She also got her own apartment in Trump Plaza and Mar-a-Lago access for one month out of every year. In a cameo in the divorce comedy The First Wives Club, Ivana said, “Don’t get mad. Get everything!”
The only “catch” in Ivana’s divorce from Donald was that, according to a 1992 court ruling, she couldn’t openly speak about the divorce without Donald’s blessing. But it wouldn’t be long before she had moved on from Donald Trump in some major ways.
Ivana branched out after her divorce from Donald
After the divorce, Ivana Trump did a little bit of everything. She tried her hand at being a writer, producing two books (For Love Alone and Free to Love) that seemed based partially on her life. The first book even ended up getting a direct-to-TV movie adaptation on CBS.
In addition to fiction, she wrote a self-help book, The Best Is Yet to Come: Coping With Divorce and Enjoying Life Again. Ironically, as someone whose life was so often the focus of newspaper columns, Ivana ended up regularly writing an advice column. Eventually, she had her own lifestyle magazine, and she launched her own lines of perfume, clothing, and jewelry (something that likely inspired her daughter Ivanka to do the same in later years).
In retrospect, we can safely say that she became a brand separate from her famous husband. As she once mused to the New York Times in 1995, “Maybe what I am is a personality… Maybe I’m selling me.”
Ivana and Donald Trump stayed friends until her death
Ivana didn’t just move on from Donald in terms of her career. She also moved on romantically, marrying Italian business guru Riccardo Mazzuccelli in 1995. Sadly, that marriage lasted only two years. She also took a page out of Donald’s book and married someone much younger. In 2008, she married an Italian actor, Rossano Rubicondi, who was more than 20 years younger than her. This marriage lasted less than a year.
It seems like Ivana was destined to never be that lucky in love. However, despite how nasty their divorce was many decades ago, she was on surprisingly friendly terms with Donald Trump until, presumably, her death. To begin with, the two frequently saw each other when she visited their grandchildren (and vice versa).
And when Donald Trump ran for president, he sought out her advice. She told the New York Post in 2016, “We speak before and after the appearances and he asks me what I thought.” Her typical advice to him when asked was that he should “be more calm,” but Donald never took that advice to heart.
Once he was elected president, Donald offered Ivana a job as ambassador to the Czech Republic, but she turned the offer down. Back in 2017, CBS reported that she and Donald had friendly conversations once per week, and she gave him advice about things like using Twitter to express his thoughts directly rather than going through a traditional publication.
And 2017 was the same year that Ivana released her final book: a memoir simply titled Raising Trump. In the wake of her sudden and untimely death, this book serves as her final statement on an amazing, tumultuous, and very rewarding life.
Love her or hate her, Ivana Trump was someone who knew how to get everything she wanted and then some, and her wild and untamed life will serve as both inspiration and cautionary tale to future generations.