Ivana Trump: From Czech industrial town to New York tabloid fame and marriage to a future president

Model left life behind the Iron Curtain and ended up marrying entrepreneur who would become US president

She was one half of a 1980s publicity-hungry power couple who traded life behind the Iron Curtain for the glitz and glamour of New York and married to a future US president.

Ivana Trump, who died at the age of 73 in her adopted hometown on Thursday, grew up far from the bright lights of Manhattan’s Upper East Side in the Czech factory town of Zlin.

There, she was taught to ski by her father Milos and went on to become a talented member of the country’s national youth ski team, although she was overlooked for the 1972 Winter Olympics.

Her first marriage came in 1971 to Austrian skier Alfred Winklmayr and that union allowed her to leave communist Czechoslovakia for Canada, where she taught English in Toronto.

She then moved to Montreal where she began to model, a career change that would eventually take her to New York, where her path would cross with that of Donald Trump.

The businessman and the model reportedly first met in 1976 at a bar in the city called Maxwell’s Plum, and after a whirlwind romance, the pair tied the knot just nine months later in 1977.

It was Mr Trump’s first marriage, and the couple had three children together, Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka and Eric.

During the 1980s the couple became a fixture in the New York social scene, with Ivana serving as the VP of interior design for the Trump Organization and helping with projects such as Trump Tower and the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in New Jersey’s Atlantic City.

When her husband bought Manhattan’s iconic 808-room Plaza Hotel in 1988 for $400m, she oversaw its renovation, with Mr Trump paying her “$1and all the dresses she can buy.”

But despite their fame and wealth, the couple’s relationship hit the rocks with Mr Trump linked to actress Marla Maples.

While Mr Trump briefed The New York Post, Ms Trump gave her side of the scandal to The New York Daily News.

“‘Ivana better deal’: Mrs. T brands Donald’s $25M pre-nuptial pact a fraud,” wrote the Daily News in February 1990.

While the Post went with front pages such as, “Ivana to Donald at secret sitdown: Gimme the Plaza! ... the jet and $150 million, too.”

The Post also ran an infamous front page that read, “Marla boasts to her pals about Donald: ‘Best sex I’ve ever had’”

Ms Trump eventually won a reported $14m, a mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, an apartment in Trump Plaza and use of Mar-a-Lago in the divorce, which was finalized in1992.

Mr Trump went on to marry Ms Marples in 1993, with the couple having daughter Tiffany Trump together.

In the wake of her divorce, Ivana launched her own business empire which included the House of Ivana clothing line, and with a ghostwriter had two novels published. She also wrote a guide to divorce called The Best Is Yet to Come.

She met Italian businessman Riccardo Mazzucchelli, whom she married in November 1995, but they divorced in 1997 and she sued him for $15m for breaching a confidentiality agreement in their prenup.

In 1997 she began dating Italian aristocrat Roffredo Lovatelli Gaetani, whom she was with until his death in 2005.

She then dated Italian actor and model Rossano Rubicondi for six years before the pair tied the knot in April 2008 in a ceremony hosted by Mr Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

The couple divorced a year later but were involved in a relationship until 2019, and he died at the age of 49 in 2021.