Ivana Trump, the first of President Donald Trump’s three wives and the mother of his three eldest children, died Thursday at age 73.
Mr. Trump confirmed the death of his ex-wife in a post on his Social Truth platform, and wrote, “I am very sad to inform everyone who loved him, many of whom, that Ivana Trump has died at his home in New York. York City. “
The former president described her as “a wonderful, beautiful and amazing woman who led a fantastic and inspiring life” and said her “pride and joy” had been the trio of children she had with the former tycoon. of real estate: Donald Trump. Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump.
“I was as proud of them, as we were all so proud of her,” she wrote. “Rest in peace, Ivana!”
In a statement, Trump’s children announced the death of their “beloved mother” with “deep sadness.”
“Our mother was an amazing woman: a force in business, a world-class athlete, a radiant beauty, and an affectionate mother and friend,” they wrote, adding that she had been “a survivor” who had “fled the communism and it has been embraced “. this country ”.
“She taught her children about rigor and toughness, compassion and determination. She will be greatly missed by her mother, her three children and her ten grandchildren,” they wrote.
Born Ivana Zelníčková in 1949 in what was then Czechoslovakia, she left the then communist country in 1971 after marrying an Austrian ski instructor whom she divorced a year later after obtaining Austrian citizenship, and she eventually went to California, then to New York, where she divorced. she earned her living as a model.
She met the future president in 1976 in New York City, and the couple married in April 1977. Their first child, Donald Trump Jr., was born just over eight months later. Her daughter, whose full name is also Ivana Trump (Ivanka is a diminutive form of the name, literally “little Ivana”) was born in 1981, with her third son, Eric Trump, three years later.
The couple was a mainstay of New York City popular culture in the 1980s, but by the end of the decade they would divorce after their affair with his future second wife, Marla Maples, became public. The divorce was controversial and provided forage on the front page for months. It was during those divorce proceedings that Mrs. Trump accused her husband of rape in a statement. She later told the author of a book about her husband that she had “felt raped” by her ex-husband, but a statement from Trump’s lawyers said she did not want her words “interpreted. in a literal or criminal sense. “
According to The New York Times, the 1992 divorce agreement between Ivana and Donald Trump granted her a $ 14 million payment, a mansion in Connecticut, an apartment in the Upper East Side cooperative known as Trump Plaza and one month a year to Mr. Trump’s Sea-to-Lake Club in Palm Beach, Florida.
Mrs. Trump would marry and divorce twice more: in 1995 with an Italian businessman she divorced two years later, and in 2008 with an Italian actor more than two decades younger than her, in a ceremony held in Mar- a-Lago with his former sister-in-law, the then Third Circuit Judge Maryanne Trump Barry who presided. That marriage ended less than a year later.
However, she remained friendly with her first husband. According to the New York Post, he claimed to have spoken to him “before and after” about his appearances on the campaign. She later told the Post that her ex-husband offered her the post of ambassador to the Czech Republic after she became president, but she turned it down. And in 2017, he told ABC News in an interview that he spoke with the then president every two weeks and had a “direct number” with him in the White House.
She told ABC that she “really didn’t want to call” her husband there because his third wife, Melania Trump, also lived there.
“I don’t want to cause any kind of jealousy or anything like that, because I’m basically Trump’s first wife,” she said. “I’m the first lady.”