There was a time when Ivana and Donald Trump were the It Couple in New York City, seen as the very symbol of opulence, glamour, and luxury. It's Ivana who first coined Donald's now-ubiquitous nickname, "The Donald," which Donald has called "an endearment." After their very messy and public divorce in the early 1990s, Donald went on to two other marriages, and he's running for president. Meanwhile, Ivana built her own life and career. Though she's largely been out of the public spotlight for the past few years, she made headlines recently because the two formed an unlikely alliance in the wake of Donald's presidential campaign. Here's everything you need to know about Ivana Trump:
A Talented Athlete
Ivana Zelníčková was born to a Czech father and Austrian mother in former Czechoslovakia in 1949. According to a 1989 profile in Spy Magazine, she was raised in a competitive household, landing acting roles in four Czech movies as a child and becoming a competitive skier by 12. "When I was doing poorly at school, my father yanked me out and got me a job in a shoe factory," she said in another interview. "After three weeks I begged him to give me another chance at doing well in school. I learned that discipline is necessary to accomplish anything in life." According to a New York Magazine profile in 1990, Ivana began dating a fellow skier George Syrovatka at 18 and moved to Prague, where he lived. She enrolled in Charles University and completed a master's degree in physical education. She also began modeling.
In 1971, Ivana left the Czech Republic and got married, but the details of her first marriage are unclear — New York reports that Syrovatka actually arranged for Ivana to marry his skiing buddy Alfred Winklmayr so she could get a "Western passport" to leave the Communist country. According to the New York Post, they parted ways in 1973. (Other outlets have reported that Ivana was married to Syrovatka, however, but Spy found no records of a marriage between Syrovatka and Ivana). What is known is that Syrovatka and Ivana remained close. She moved to Montreal, Canada, and lived with Syrovatka, who had emigrated there in 1972. Her modeling career took off, with clients that included Eaton's department store, designer Auckie Sanft, and the 1976 Olympic Summer Games.
Relationship With Trump
Ivana met Donald Trump in New York at a PR event for the Olympic Games. She recounted the meeting to the New York Post in 2016:
"[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.'"
After the meal, Donald paid the bill on the sly and disappeared.
"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,' " Ivana says with a laugh.
When she walked outside, there was Donald, in the driver's seat of his own limousine. "He drove us home and then we started to date," she says.
They were married the next year, and for over a decade, their lifestyle fueled New York's gossip columns. Together, they had three children: Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric. Ivana went to work at the Trump Organization, climbing up the ranks to become president of the Trump's Castle casino resort in Atlantic City, and later of managing the Plaza Hotel.
But there were signs of tension in the marriage too. When Donald promoted Ivana to manage the Plaza Hotel, he reportedly humiliated her by saying, "My wife, Ivana, is a brilliant manager. I will pay her one dollar a year and all the dresses she can buy!" In 1988, he told Oprah, "There's not a lot of disagreement because, ultimately, Ivana does exactly as I tell her to do." Ivana then jokingly dismissed him as a "male chauvinist" ... which is maybe not such a joke? He would later write, in The Art of the Comeback, "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." The marriage dissolved shortly thereafter. In 1990, they entered a highly publicized divorce. The rumor at the time, as People reported, was that Trump was cheating on Ivana with 26-year-old model Marla Maples:
By most accounts, the ailing marriage took its fatal downhill plunge during the couple's stormy Christmas holiday in Aspen, where they were seen arguing on the slopes and outside Bonnie's, a popular restaurant on the mountain. Another vacationing skier reports that on Dec. 29 Ivana became enraged when she learned that actress-model Maria Maples was also at the resort.
Two days later, according to one witness, when Maples, 26, walked out of Bonnie's, Ivana confronted her, demanding, "You bitch, leave my husband alone." Trump, who was sitting within earshot putting on his skis, took off down the mountain. Wrong move: Ivana is an excellent skier; Donald is not. When the formidable Czech pushed off in hot pursuit, fascinated observers swear they saw her whip in front of Donald and then ski backwards down the slopes, wagging her finger in his face.
Ivana's philosophy was "Don't get mad, get everything." The Trumps reached a settlement in 1991 in which Ivana reportedly got a 45-room Greenwich mansion, an apartment in the Trump Plaza, use of Palm Beach property Mar-a-Lago for one month every year, custody of their three children (and alimony of $650,000 annually), and $14 million. In 1992, a court ruled that Ivana was not allowed to talk publicly about the divorce without Donald's permission.
Controversy Over Rape Claim
In 2015, the Daily Beast unearthed claims from a deposition alleging that Donald raped Ivana during their marriage. The alleged incident was reported in Harry Hurt III's 1993 Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, which included a clarification from Ivana, according to the Daily Beast.
"During a deposition given by me in connection with my matrimonial case, I stated that my husband had raped me," Ivana's statement said. "[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a 'rape,' but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense."
After the Daily Beast story broke, Ivana released the following statement to CNN: "I have recently read some comments attributed to me from nearly 30 years ago at a time of very high tension during my divorce from Donald. The story is totally without merit. Donald and I are the best of friends and together have raised three children that we love and are very proud of. I have nothing but fondness for Donald and wish him the best of luck on his campaign. Incidentally, I think he would make an incredible president."
In 2016, she told the New York Post, "It was all the lawyers. The negotiations and stuff like that. I was never abused."
Career as a Novelist, Fashion Designer, and Businesswoman
Ivana wasted no time in forging a path for herself independent of The Donald. In 1992, she published a juicy, seemingly semi-autobiographical romance novel called For Love Alone. She followed it up with Free to Love in 1993. By the mid-1990s, her reinvention was complete. Ivana made a cameo in a made-for-television movie adaption of For Love Alone by CBS and later appeared in The First Wives Club as herself:
In a tour for her self-help book, The Best Is Yet to Come: Coping With Divorce and Enjoying Life Again, she told the New York Times in 1995 that "Ivana is what the people call me." She was determined to turn "Ivana" into a brand (without the "Trump"): "Maybe what I am is a personality. I'm traveling extensively, and wherever I go the perception of me helps to sell the products. Maybe I'm selling me," she said.
That's exactly what she did. She began writing an advice column, launched Ivana Haute Couture, selling perfumes, clothes, and jewelry, and started Ivana Inc to handle her publicity work, according to her website. She also launched a lifestyle magazine, appeared in commercials and print ads, and later even starred in a reality TV special. Now, she is writing a memoir about raising her and Donald's three children, Ivanka, Don Jr. and Eric Trump. The book, which will be published this September, will be "nonpolitical" and detail Ivana's childhood in communist Czechoslovakia, her relocation to New York, her romance and success as a businesswoman, according to Politico.
In 1995, she married Italian businessman Riccardo Mazzuccelli. But in 1997, the two separated.
Love for Younger Men
After six years of dating, in 2008, 59-year-old Ivana tied the knot with Italian actor Rossano Rubicondi, over two decades her junior. "She's an amazing woman. Beautiful, smart, sexy, powerful, successful, young in spirit," he told People. "We have fun together — otherwise I wouldn't be getting married!"
"I don't need to get married to get the babies," she said of her fourth marriage. "I have them. I'm not marrying for the social position. I don't need to get married because of money. It just feels right. I have no fears." Ivana wore a 12-carat-ring designed by daughter Ivanka in a ceremony at Mar-a-Lago in 2008. They split within a year, but as of 2014, they were still romantically linked.
Ivana has a type: Young Italian men. "I have this thing for Italians. I don't know why, but the bad boys — not all of them, but the sort of semi-bad," she told Oprah in 2013. "I'm very energetic. I don't want to worry about a bad back and bad knees."
Advisor and Friend to Trump
Removed from the nasty divorce by more than 20 years, Ivana told Oprah, "Me and Donald are very friendly, we have now five grandchildren and the kids, they call me not 'Grandma,' they call me 'Glam-ma' or 'Ivana-ma,' for the youngest ones. And we just enjoying our lives — you know life is too short."
When Trump ran for president, Ivana played an informal role in the campaign. She waded into the immigration debate, telling the New York Post:
I have nothing against Mexicans, but if they [come] here — like this 19-year-old, she's pregnant, she crossed over a wall that's this high. She gives the birth in American hospital, which is for free. The child becomes American automatically. She brings the whole family, she doesn't pay the taxes, she doesn't have a job, she gets the housing, she gets the food stamps. Who's paying? You and me.
But she added that "we need immigrants. Who's going to vacuum our living rooms and clean up after us? Americans don't like to do that." As for her ex, the then-presidential candidate, she offered him advice. "We speak before and after the appearances and he asks me what I thought," she said. Her nuggets of wisdom include "be more calm" and offering up the motto, "You think it, I say it."
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Prachi Gupta is an award-winning journalist and former senior reporter at Jezebel. She won a Writers Guild Award for her investigative essay “Stories About My Brother.” Her work was featured in The Best American Magazine Writing 2021 and has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post Magazine, Marie Claire, Salon, Elle, and elsewhere. PrachiGupta lives in New York City.
