Author.
Model.
Designer.
World-class skier.
The late Ivana Trump was more than just Donald's wife, but there's no doubt that the former
president changed her life forever.
Here's a look back at how they met, and how Ivana's life was never the same.
Ivana Trump was one-half of one of the most iconic power couples of the 1980s, but her
upbringing in the Eastern European country that was once known as "Czechoslovak Socialist
Republic" was vastly different from the glamorous lifestyle to which she became accustomed during
her marriage to Donald Trump.
Ivana was born Ivana Marie Zelnícková on February 20, 1949, to an electrical engineer
father and telephone operator mother.
From an early age, Ivana exhibited a natural talent for ski racing — a sport she took
up competitively at age six, according to Biography.
By 12, Ivana's travels as a member of Czechoslovakia's junior national team had opened her eyes to
the glittering world that lay outside the Iron Curtain.
As a teen, Ivana realized that competitive skiing could be her ticket out of a nation
that had been under communist totalitarian rule since 1948.
"I could see that there was a better life in the West."
And that's precisely how she used her ski career: as a stepping stone, one that eventually
led her to her pivotal first meeting with the real estate mogul, Donald J. Trump.
After earning a master's degree in physical education in 1972 from Prague's Charles University,
Ivana left Czechoslovakia for Canada, without having had to identify as a "Soviet defector"
because of her marriage to an Austrian ski instructor.
The marriage, which Ivana's attorneys claim was "never consummated," according to Page
Six, entitled Ivana to an Austrian passport.
She obtained it in March 1972 and used it to emigrate to Canada in September before
having the marriage unceremoniously "dissolved" in August 1973.
When Ivana met Donald Trump in Montreal in 1976, she had already begun transitioning
from professional athlete to fashion model.
However, Donald was arguably prouder of Ivana's skiing prowess, bragging that his wife had
once been an alternate on Czechoslovakia's Olympic ski team, according to the New York
Times.
Ivana herself also made this claim.
"I was alternate for Olympic Games."
The claim was later debunked in a Spy magazine investigation.
There are a number of conflicting accounts regarding how Donald and Ivana met, according
to the New York Daily News.
Some say they met in Montreal, where she was living at the time.
Others say it was in New York City.
What everyone seems to agree on, however, is that it was 1976, and Ivana was still skiing
to supplement her income working as a fashion model.
According to Ivana's memoir, "Raising Trump," the fateful meeting took place in New York
City, where Ivana was in town promoting the Montreal Olympics.
Everything changed the moment Donald Trump tapped Ivana on the shoulder and offered to
help her friends secure a table at the now-defunct Maxwell's Plum on East 64th Street.
The eatery at the time was famous for its glamorous clientele, which included business
moguls and the statuesque fashion models that hoped to marry them.
The night they first met, Donald Trump offered Ivana a ride home, and the two began a jet-setting
courtship that included a visit to Aspen, Colorado, where Ivana spared the ego of the
man she would someday dub "The Donald" by pretending to be a skiing novice, according
to the New York Post.
On April 7, 1977, Donald and Ivan got married, opting for a private ceremony.
Nine months after that, the couple announced the birth of their first child, Donald Trump,
Jr., on December 31, 1977.
Their second child, Ivanka, was born October 30, 1981, and the former couple's youngest,
Eric, was born January 6, 1984.
As glamorous and jet-setting as Ivana was, her three children maintain that she was,
to them, an incredibly admirable woman who successfully balanced her high-powered marriage
to Donald with a warm and nurturing mothering style.
In a joint statement after her death, Ivana's three children said she was, quote, an "amazing
mom, teacher and inspiration to all of us."
Whatever the Trump matriarch hoped to accomplish in adulthood, it likely didn't involve modeling
or skiing.
Nor can anyone say exactly what Donald Trump wanted out of life, although he did tell Tom
Brokaw in 1980 that he had no interest in becoming a billionaire.
"I really don't.
I just want to keep busy and keep active."
Nevertheless, the Trump marriage seems to have possessed a mutually symbiotic heat-seeking
alchemy that the public responded to in a big way.
Indeed, Ivana Trump began to acquire a rather astonishing level of celebrity soon after
she married Donald.
Ivana's marriage to Donald took her on a wild ride from immigrant to U.S. institution.
After her death, the New York Times recounted Ivana's many celebrity-filled outings in the
'80s and '90s, including rubbing elbows with the likes of cosmetics mogul Estée Lauder,
opera legend Luciano Pavarotti, actor Michael Douglas, and boxing promoter Don King.
As the celebrity photographer Patrick McMullan once said, Ivana Trump was the "bold in the
bold-faced name."
No wonder the New York Times observed in its obituary for Mrs. Trump that it was Donald's
marriage to Ivana that helped make the future president a "household name."
Ivana Trump was an icon of the "more-is-more" ethos that prevailed during the "greed is
good" 1980s, and she shared this status with the then-burgeoning real-estate-mogul who
would later be president, until their divorce in 1992.
In a lengthy tribute to the life of Ivana Trump, the New York Times wrote that throughout
her marriage to Donald, Ivana managed to command "almost as much media attention as her husband."
In fact, the Times asserted that it was Mr. and Mrs. Donald Trump who helped define the
'80s as an "era of gaudy excess among the elite."
And this did much more than just change Ivana's trajectory; it formed the basis for Trump
becoming a reality television personality and rising to political power in 2016.
Donald Trump began his career working for his father, a real estate tycoon who got his
own start in the 1920s.
By 1977, when Ivana and Donald began their courtship, Donald was just a few years into
developing the business that would eventually become the Trump Organization.
That business was the renovation of the Grand Central Station-adjacent Commodore Hotel into
the Grand Hyatt.
The timing could not have been more perfect.
As Donald Trump would soon discover, the woman he had chosen to be his life partner possessed
not only a preternatural capitalistic instinct but also a natural flair for over-the-top
interior design.
Ivana went on to give the same 1980s treatment to two of Trump's casino acquisitions.
Three years later, Ivana took on the job of executive managing the Plaza Hotel, which
Trump bought in 1988, transforming the well-worn Central Park South fixture into the jewel
box it is today.
"She's very disciplined, and she's very bright, and she really has a sense of elegance and
style."
One of Ivana Trump's proudest accomplishments was becoming a mogul in her own right.
As she told Vanity Fair in a 1988 profile that focused on her role in her then-husband's
empire, she said,
"Donald calls me his twin as a woman."
And who else better than his twin to charge with running his casino empire?
When Trump's Castle Casino Resort, which is now the Golden Nugget, opened in 1985, Ivana
was installed as president and CEO.
"She became an executive, not a wife."
The Trump marriage blew up not long after this.
By 1989, Donald Trump had taken up with a young model, Marla Maples, which led to a
tense confrontation between the Trumps in Aspen, Colorado.
"Did you see warning signs?"
"I really didn't.
I really didn't."
By 1990, Donald was reportedly locking Ivana out of her own office at the Plaza.
Of course, that did not stop her from battling Donald for half his fortune and winning a
settlement that included $14 million and a mansion in Connecticut.
"That contract doesn't worry me.
I'll fight it."
After the smoke had cleared from her divorce from The Donald, Ivana set out to build a
business empire all her own in the field of fashion.
From the ground up, albeit with the help of some beaucoup seed money from her divorce
settlement, Ivana built her empire through both QVC and the Home Shopping Network.
According to the Daily Mail, Ivana designed the clothing and jewelry based on her own
glitzy taste, and wouldn't you know it, people bought it right up.
It didn't hurt that Ivana leveraged her own celebrity appeal by showing up on these shopping
networks to sell items directly to viewers at home.
Ivana also branched out into "lifestyle products" that included fragrances, makeup, and costume
jewelry.
During her marriage to Donald Trump, Ivana Trump watched her husband become not only
a billionaire but also a published author.
"The Art of the Deal," which came out in 1987, rose to the top spot on the New York Times
bestseller list, and remained there for 13 weeks.
Competitive to her core, after her divorce from Donald, Ivana set out to become a published
author herself.
And she did just that, starting in October 1993, when she published her first book, a
novel called "Free to Love."
While it's not known as a literary tour de force, it certainly served its purpose — to
the extent its purpose was to prove that Ivana could do anything her ex-husband could do,
and then some.
The next year, Ivana published her first memoir, "The Best Is Yet to Come: Coping with Divorce
and Enjoying Life Again."
As the title suggests, the book offers advice, both from herself and from thousands of women
who reached out to support her during her divorce, on "how to survive divorce and single
parenthood." 2017 saw the publication of Ivana's "Raising Trump: Family Values from America's
First Mother."
By the time Ivana Trump was done with her marriage to The Donald, she was already on
her way to developing a whole new outlook.
Specifically, after a failed attempt at marriage with the Donald-aged Riccardo Mazzucchelli,
Ivana moved onto younger men.
In 2006, Ivana participated in her own reality show for the purpose of helping another very
rich woman find her own younger man.
"Ivana Young Man" came and went rather quickly, but it ushered into popular culture the famous
Ivana-ism that when it comes to men, it is better to be "a babysitter than a nurse."
Enter Rossano Rubicondi, an Italian actor more than two decades younger than Ivana.
The two married in 2008 and divorced the following year.
Nevertheless, the two were on-again, off-again all the way until 2019, according to Page
Six.
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