Trump was born in the former Czechoslovakia and became a competitive skier and model. In addition to raising the former president’s three oldest children, Donald Jr, Ivanka and Eric, she was a writer, designer and executive who ran one of her husband’s Atlantic City casinos, Trump Castle, and managed the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan. In a social media post Thursday afternoon, Donald Trump said he was “very sad” to share the news that Ivana had died at her home in New York. Ivana Trump with children Ivanka, left, and Eric, and ex-husband Riccardo Mazzucchelli in October 1993 © AP “She was a wonderful, beautiful and amazing woman who lived a wonderful and inspiring life,” he added. Ivana Marie Zelníčková was born and raised in communist Czechoslovakia, the daughter of an electrical engineer. Accounts differ on whether she actually served as an alternate on the country’s Olympic ski team in 1972. A marriage of convenience allowed her to obtain an Austrian passport. She then moved to Canada, where she worked as a ski instructor and model and improved her English. According to a report in the former president’s memoir, Trump: The Art of the Deal, the couple met at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal and married the following year in New York. (Other accounts claim they met in New York). “I had dated many different women up until then, but I had never been serious with any of them. Ivana was not someone you went easy on,” Trump wrote, stating that his then-wife was “almost as competitive as I am.” Ivana Trump arrives at the amfAR Cinema Against AIDS 2006 event in France © Reuters After they were married, Donald handed over to Ivana, a lover of pink marble, the responsibility for the interior decoration of properties developed by his company, the Trump Organization. In addition to catching Trump’s eye, the ambitious Czech immigrant was also credited by People magazine with creating a decisive social ascent in Manhattan for her Queens-born husband. The Trumps’ 14-year marriage imploded in spectacular fashion after Donald met the younger Marla Maples. Their divorce, finalized in 1991, became a tabloid sensation. Ivana reportedly walked away with $14 million, as well as a house and an apartment. Gossip columnist Liz Smith called her “the biggest unimportant story I’ve ever seen — next to Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton”. Despite the apparent outrage, Donald hosted his ex-wife’s wedding to Italian actor Rossano Rubicondi at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, in 2008. She returned the favor by supporting his presidential campaign. In her post-Donald life, Ivana launched jewelry and cosmetics on the Home Shopping Network and wrote best-selling books. In a 2017 memoir, Raising Trump, Ivana quipped, “My version of helicopter parenting was bringing the kids to work with me in the Trump helicopter.” In a recent recollection of her 1980s hotel days, published on her daughter’s blog, Ivana eschewed her glamorous reputation to describe herself as a hard-working woman. “As a beautiful, very wealthy woman, there was a stigma that I was supposed to be at home, dressing for guests, going to meals, supporting charities here and there,” she wrote, “but it wasn’t just that. .”
