Ivana Trump, the primary spouse of the previous president and a associate in shaping his gilded and larger-than-life persona in Eighties New York Metropolis, has died on the age of 73.
Trump was born within the former Czechoslovakia, and have become a aggressive skier and mannequin. Along with elevating the previous president’s three older youngsters, Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric, she was an writer, designer and government who ran certainly one of her husband’s Atlantic Metropolis casinos, the Trump Fort, and managed the Plaza Lodge in Manhattan.
In a social media publish on Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump stated he was “very saddened” to share the information that Ivana had died at her house in New York Metropolis.
“She was an exquisite, lovely and wonderful girl who led a terrific and inspirational life,” he added.
Ivana Marie Zelníčková was born and raised in communist Czechoslovakia, the daughter of {an electrical} engineer. Accounts differ as as to if she really served as an alternate on the nation’s Olympic ski staff in 1972. A wedding of comfort allowed her to acquire an Austrian passport. She then moved to Canada, the place she labored as a ski teacher and mannequin and improved her English.
In keeping with an account within the former-president’s memoir, Trump: The Artwork of the Deal, the couple met on the 1976 Summer time Olympics in Montreal and married the next yr in New York Metropolis. (Different accounts declare they met in New York Metropolis).
“I’d dated a variety of totally different girls by then, however I’d by no means gotten significantly concerned with any of them. Ivana wasn’t somebody you dated casually,” Trump wrote, stating that his then-wife was “nearly as aggressive as I’m”.
After they wed, Donald handed Ivana, a lover of pink marble, duty for the inside design of properties that his firm, the Trump Group, was creating. Along with honing the Trump look, the bold Czech immigrant was additionally credited by Individuals Journal with engineering a decided social rise in Manhattan for her Queens-born husband.
The Trumps’ 14-year marriage blew up in spectacular vogue after Donald took up with the youthful Marla Maples. Their divorce, finalised in 1991, grew to become a tabloid fascination. Ivana was reported to have walked away with $14mn, in addition to a house and an condo.
Gossip columnist Liz Smith dubbed it “the most important story I’ve ever seen that isn’t necessary — subsequent to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton”.
Regardless of the obvious acrimony, Donald hosted his ex-wife’s wedding ceremony to Italian actor Rossano Rubicondi at his Mar-a-Lago membership in Palm Seashore, Florida, in 2008. She returned the favour by supporting his presidential marketing campaign.
In her post-Donald life, Ivana hawked jewelry and cosmetics on the Dwelling Buying Community and wrote best-selling books. In a 2017 memoir, Elevating Trump, Ivana quipped: “My model of helicopter parenting was to deliver the children to work with me within the Trump chopper.”
In a latest recollection of her Eighties lodge days, posted on her daughter’s weblog, Ivana eschewed her glamorous repute to forged herself as a hard-working girl.
“As a lovely, very rich girl, there was a stigma that I used to be purported to be house, to decorate up for guests, go to lunches, help charities right here and there,” she wrote, “however that was not all I used to be about.”
