Ivana Trump met Donald’s young lover on a ski trip and used his betrayal to build her own empire
IVANA TRUMP lived her life by the line she delivered in movie comedy The First Wives Club: “Don’t get mad, get everything!”
Former US President Donald Trump’s first wife died on Thursday, age 73, after a fall brought on by a suspected heart attack at her luxurious home near New York’s Central Park.
In a statement on behalf of her three children, son Eric, 38, said: “Our mother was an incredible woman — a force in business, a world-class athlete, a radiant beauty, caring mother and friend.
“Ivana Trump was a survivor. She fled from communism and embraced this country. She taught her children about grit and toughness, compassion and determination.”
Daughter Ivanka, 40, added: “Mom was brilliant, charming, passionate and wickedly funny. She lived life to the fullest, never forgoing an opportunity to laugh and dance.”
Ivana was married to the property mogul and US Apprentice host for 12 years before telling the man she called The Donald: “You’re fired!”
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She would go on to win what was then one of the world’s biggest divorce settlements.
Parents to Donald Jnr, 44, Ivanka, and Eric, their £2billion property empire funded three homes — including a 118-room Florida mansion — a Boeing 727, a £20million yacht and a helicopter named after Ivana.
Unimaginable wealth and luxury
In New York they lived in a huge 50-room suite complete with an indoor waterfall and pink marble floors.
Ivana was not idle though. She spoke five languages and had a fierce work ethic ingrained in her from her modest upbringing in what was then communist Czechoslovakia.
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While Donald was the dealmaker of the Trump property empire, Ivana was the brains that made it work.
She helped him develop the famous Trump Tower skyscraper in Manhattan, renovate the Grand Hyatt hotel in New York and build the Trump Taj Mahal casino in New Jersey.
Donald bought the Plaza hotel near Central Park — which featured in Home Alone 2 — in 1988 and Ivana took over as manager. Her salary more than 30 years ago was $1million a year, though Trump always claimed she was paid one dollar plus all the dresses she could buy.
The pair often appeared together on TV, including interviews with Terry Wogan and Oprah Winfrey.
Ivana proudly said: “What is wrong with being nouveau riche? They make money the old-fashioned way — working for it.”
She often talked about how she married her first of four husbands, Austrian ski instructor Alfred Winklmayr, to escape her home of Zlin in the former Czechoslovakia.
The woman said: ‘I’m Marla and I love your husband. Do you?’ Ivana said: ‘Donald was always in the office. I have no idea how he had the time to cheat’
In the early Seventies she moved to Canada, where she found work as a ski instructor and model.
Modelling led to her first meeting with Trump, in New York City in 1976.
Donald secured her and her friends a table at a Manhattan restaurant, paid the bill and chauffeured her back to her hotel in a Cadillac.
“My instincts told me that Donald was smart and funny, an all-American good guy,” she wrote in her 2017 memoir, Raising Trump.
That encounter helped propel Ivana to a life of unimaginable wealth and luxury.
Back then she was already hinting that Donald was thinking of running for the White House.
She said: “’It’s not for the next ten years, definitely not.
“There’s so much to do. But in ten years Donald is going to be just 51 years old — a young man.’’
In the decade they spent building their fortune, Ivana never suspected her husband was cheating.
On a 1989 skiing holiday in the top resort of Aspen, Colorado, she was humiliated when a younger woman introduced herself to Ivana, then 40.
The willowy blonde said to Ivana: “I’m Marla and I love your husband. Do you?”
That was the moment Ivana discovered Donald had been cheating on her with 27-year-old model and singer Marla Maples, who would become Trump’s second wife.
Ivana said: “Donald was always in the office and coming home, so I had no idea how he had the time to cheat.”
She gave Trump an ultimatum — only for him to choose Marla, whom he married in 1993.
Ivana, who in 2010 appeared on our screens in Celebrity Big Brother, would later become friendly with Trump’s third wife, Melania, but she always called Maples “the showgirl”.
Although her pre-nup deal increased four times during their marriage, the divorce negotiations were acrimonious.
She was “devastated” by Trump’s lawyers’ claim that she was a bad mother. Trump announced at one point, “I’m keeping Don Jr”, then in his teens. She shot back: “Keep him. I have two others to raise.”
Within hours, Don Jr was back, returned to her by one of Trump’s bodyguards.
Ivana said: “I knew Donald would not know what to do with him. It was hurtful but I could not be intimidated.” It took two years but Ivana ended up with £12million, plus £250,000 a year for the kids, a 45-bed mansion in Connecticut and an apartment in New York’s Trump Plaza complex.
Because of her whopping divorce settlement, Ivana appeared in the movie The First Wives Club, saying: ‘Remember, ladies, don’t get mad. Get everything’
Because of her whopping settlement, Ivana was asked to appear with Bette Midler, Diane Keaton and Goldie Hawn in the 1996 movie comedy The First Wives Club, in which she said with a smile that line: “Remember, ladies, don’t get mad. Get everything.”
She was wryly hailed as the “patron saint of dumped women” after writing a best-selling book titled The Best Is Yet To Come: Coping With Divorce And Enjoying Life Again.
An only child, Ivana Marie Zelnicek was born in 1949 in Soviet-dominated Czech- oslovakia.
Her dad Milos, an engineer at a power plant, looked to toughen up his daughter through sport, and she won her first skiing race at the age of six.
Ivana remembered: “When I was doing poorly at school, my father yanked me out and got me a job in a shoe factory.
“After three weeks I begged him to give me another chance at doing well in school. I learnt that discipline is necessary to accomplish anything in life.”
When her marriage to Trump failed, Ivana put those hard lessons into action and grew her personal fortune to more than £80million. Despite their torrid divorce, she teamed up with Trump in 1995 to make a telly advert for Pizza Hut, which poked fun at their relationship.
The commercial saw the pair pretend to flirt on screen while implying that getting back together would be “wrong”. It was then revealed they were discussing eating their pizza crust first.
In a commercial for low-fat milk she burbled: “You know what I say, darling? You can never be too rich or too thin.”
Tired of earning money for others, she sold her divorce-settlement mansion for £12million and set up a fashion company, House Of Ivana. She flogged her branded clothes, costume jewellery and make-up on TV shopping channels.
With her distinctive accent and bubbly personality, she was a natural saleswoman and claimed to have shifted 5,000 bottles of perfume in a single evening.
She said: “My sales record was $675,000 in one hour. If I didn’t sell $200,000 an hour it was a disappointment.’’
The divorce from Trump didn’t put her off marriage though.
In December 1995 she tied the knot for a third time, to Italian Riccardo Mazzucchelli. An engineer, Mazzucchelli turned out not to be as rich as he claimed when they were dating.
Ivana became fed up with his demands for money and his failure to pay the bill for the party she threw in London for his 50th birthday.
She ended the marriage after two years and sued him for breaching a confidentiality clause in their pre-nup.
In 2006 she presented a reality TV show called Ivana Young Man, where she helped wealthy older women to find younger fellas.
Two years later she married her own toy boy, an Italian actor and model by the name of Rossano Rubicondi, who was 23 years her junior. The marriage did not last long but they continued to maintain an on-off relationship until his death last year.
When Trump became President, Ivana would speak to him in the White House almost every week.
More than 25 years after their bitter divorce, Trump offered his first wife the job as US ambassador to the Czech Republic.
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She turned him down, as it would have meant giving up her jet-set lifestyle. She said: “It’s four years in Prague, so bye-bye to Miami, bye-bye to New York in spring and fall, bye-bye to Saint-Tropez in summer.”
Her close friend Vivian Serota said: “She had a very exciting life and then she had her heart broken. Women relate to that.’’
